Behind the hysteria is old story of ‘the sow that ate her own farrow’

JONATHAN SWIFT wrote those lines in 1703, so it would seem builders have long enjoyed their reputation.

The famous Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin had less to say about economists, probably because Adam Smith had not yet invented that particular branch of study.

Certain economic commentators in Ireland are, however, at present enjoying an ascendency. These are the ones who have found many and varied ways of saying “I told you so”.

There’s an hysteria out there. It’s hard to say whether it’s driven by the media or reflected by them.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle — the media feeds public perception which in turn is reported as more fear. One way or another it’s irrational and, in my humble opinion, ultimately unhealthy.

Some facts:

1. At the time of the 2006 census, which measured both the population and the housing stock, the Republic of Ireland would have needed an additional 653,155 homes to come into line with the average number of persons per dwelling that existed in England and Wales at the time of the last British census, which took place in 2002.

At our highest annual rate of production, that of 2006, this would have taken 7.68 years to achieve.

In mid-2006 the average price of a house in Ireland was €292,979. In Britain it was £199,186 which, at the exchange rate in force at the time, translated into €291,890.

2. Government inspectors — both directly employed and contracted in — have been all over the banking industry in Ireland for the past six months or so.

Not with standing this, no other banking director or manager has had any charge of wrongdoing made against him or her.

This means the actions of the former chairman of Anglo Irish Bank, Seán FitzPatrick, in hiding loans made to himself and another director by their own bank, are simply an aberration.

3. Every other country in the developed world is in financial trouble. Many foreign banks, which were formerly synonymous with financial security, have seen their shares lose just as much value as the Irish banks.

It has now been reported that the US economy has shrunk by 3.8% in just one quarter — the largest drop in 27 years.

It is to be hoped that our commentators will keep this in mind when next they talk of historical or comparative negative records for this country.

Seán Quinn has admitted he made mistakes (the person who never made a mistake never made anything) but at the same time, in his recent RTÉ interview with Tommie Gorman, he clearly demonstrated the good that has been done by people like himself, his associates and employees for business development here.

This interview has not, at least as yet, received anything like the airtime it deserves but it can be seen on the RTÉ website, at www.rte.ie/news/2009/ 0130/newsspecial.html

In the same interview, Quinn alluded to the media frenzy that has been focused on him and his enterprises.

What he described looks like an example of the truth of an adage that we might have hoped was no longer valid: James Joyce’s comment that Ireland was the “the sow that ate her own farrow”.

This was said in the context of the arts, which certainly do not now exist in anything like the atmosphere of dread and condemnation that prompted the remark.

But are we still, as a nation, so insecure we have to find another scapegoat, this time the business community, when we’re faced with a challenge that has come about for no reason other than that we represent a small, open part of a globalised economy and have therefore been vulnerable to the toxic debt instruments that were developed in the USA and then spread from there all over the world?

Seamus McKenna

Solarwave

Bagenalstown Business Park

Co Carlow.