The next 100 days - Success may cost Cowen his popularity

TAOISEACH Brian Cowen made his first significant public appearance in a few weeks yesterday when he joined the people of Omagh — and virtually everyone on this small island — in remembering the terrible times that led to the murder of 31 innocent people in that quiet, unremarkable Tyrone town 10 years ago.

That moving ceremony was probably one of the very few times since he became Taoiseach just over 100 days ago that anything other than the economy or our tremendous Lisbon dilemma dominated his thoughts.

There must have been moments since May 7 when Mr Cowen wondered what he did to deserve such a tsunami of pessimism.

In that short time — the Offaly ballad session on the back of a lorry is still fresh in our minds — he has had to accept challenges greater than any his immediatepredecessors had to contemplate. Nothing Ahern, Reynolds, Haughey, Bruton or even FitzGerald had to resolve compares with the challenges facing him.

Our economy can only go with trends, it cannot shape them and, no matter what Lisbon’s opponents tell us, we are now supplicants rather than partners in Europe. However, it must be acknowledged that the North, and all of those terrible Omaghs, no longer needs the kind of attention it once did.

Just as well. Unemployment is approaching 7%, the economy faces the prospect of shrinking for the first time in 50 years and we will have to borrow more than is permitted by the EU’s Stability Pact to pay the bills. Then there’s the wage demands. Rubbing salt into the wounds, the eurozone economy has just recorded its first ever contraction in the second quarter.

We may get a state-of-the-nation speech in the autumn and after that we’ll have a December budget. The challenge will be to move beyond the narrow world of the Department of Finance’s concerns and help us reach a position to exploit the global recovery when it inevitably arrives. Achieving that means sanity on pay at all levels of society, a shot in the arm for the national spatial strategy, the end of de-centralisation and public services and sheltered private services embracing more competition and de-regulation.

In all of this furore college fees may become a litmus test. Their reintroduction will be loudly opposed by powerful interests but if Mr Cowen’s government decides our colleges must struggle on without them he will win a fickle smidgen of popularity but he will have made the prospect of recovery even more remote.

Mr Cowen’s predecessor was described as the most popular Taoiseach of modern times. He achieved that empty status because he avoided hard issues, preferring back slapping to leadership. Now, in a different time, we are paying the price for that buffoonery. That is not and option for Mr Cowen or the county right now. Already he has shown toughness but can he administer the tough love? Will he jeopardise Fianna Fáil’s popularity with European elections on the horizon for success in the long term?

The next 100 days will indeed be interesting times.