In just one year we’ve all become shareholders in Cowen’s nightmare

WASN’T it Queen Elizabeth who first used the phrase “annus horribilis” to refer back to a particularly bad period in her long reign?

On Thursday, our Taoiseach celebrates (if that’s the word) his first birthday in office. He must surely be looking back on the last year as an “annus bloody awfullis”.

Back then, it all looked so different. On the day Brian Cowen was appointed Taoiseach, our newspapers were reporting that the financial regulator was investigating the “spreading of false rumours about Anglo Irish Bank”. A shop in Suffolk Street in Dublin fetched approximately €10 million on the commercial market.

A new Lexus was introduced to the Irish market – with a five-litre V8 engine. Presumably, potential owners weren’t too bothered by the news that day that oil prices had just hit a record $122 a barrel. Among the potential owners, probably, were the medical professors who were being offered €295,000 a year to work full-time in the public service (ie, to have no private practice on the side, along with their teaching jobs).

It’s hard to believe it – all that happened only a year ago this week. It seems like another era already. It would be a brave man who would introduce a new Lexus to the Irish market today – even though, in the heyday of the Celtic Tiger, the Lexus and the BMW shot up the rankings to join the top 10 list of most popular cars in Ireland.

But actually what the newspapers were full of on the day Brian Cowen was appointed was predictions about how successful he would be, and reminiscences about his immediate predecessor.

“He never makes enemies if he can make a friend” was the heading on one article about Bertie Ahern, while another mused about whether Bertie’s future was going to be in Brussels or the Park.

But it was in the Dáil that much time and attention was given to the qualities of the man taking over the big job. John Gormley described Brian Cowen as having learned lessons from Bertie Ahern, a man to whom the country owed a deep debt of gratitude.

And a blushing Bertie Ahern referred to the incoming Taoiseach in glowing terms: “His deep involvement with Northern Ireland and the peace process and his skilled and widely admired engagement in Europe on behalf of the European Union… great flair and capacity… a most successful contributor to partnership government… a fair-minded and straight-talking participant … all the necessary skills to lead… towards the next stage of development in line with the needs of our economy and society… uniquely well qualified.”

Nobody disagreed. Even though there were many troubling signs on the horizon that day, it seemed like an occasion for celebration. And celebrate we did. It was months, to all visible signs, before the new government appointed just a year ago this week got down to work. Bonfires, singing, parties – it seemed as if we were ending the era of the pint of Bass only to begin the era of the pint of plain.

One year later, the uniquely qualified Taoiseach is presiding over a wrecked economy, shattered social partnership, public services in a complete shambles, a fearful and anxious people and a country whose international reputation is in tatters.

In one of the many ironies of the past year, we never did find out, did we, who was spreading those false rumours about Anglo-Irish Bank? All we discovered was that the truth was far worse than the rumours.

I had to bring some rubbish to the dump over the weekend. Sorry, we don’t call it a dump any more – it’s the local recycling centre now. And in fairness, it is a brilliantly organised place that enables you to divide your rubbish into genuinely recyclable or biodegradable material, on the one hand, or more traditional rubbish on the other.

In one of the skips – for electrical goods – I saw broken and battered widescreen laser televisions, the victims of their own built-in obsolescence. Another skip, marked “general waste – non-bulky items”, was full to the brim of old bits of broken furniture, what looked like doors from kitchen units, tyres, mattresses. Sitting on top, all alone, was a silver-coloured ice-bucket with gold coloured handles.

Fake silver, fake gold, presumably.

I wondered how many cocktail parties that ice bucket had graced before its owners sensibly decided that a little less ostentation mightn’t go amiss. In all its glory, sitting on top of a mountain of rubbish, it looked like a perfect little headstone for the Celtic Tiger.

In years to come, maybe, we’ll read books and theses and dissertations about these last 365 days. Historians will wonder about whether any fall from grace has been so precipitous and total in the history of politics.

Political commentators will argue about the fairness or unfairness of it all.

Economists will write learnedly about the international effects that did so much damage to our open economy.

The rest of us will wonder how and why did it all go wrong?

And our Taoiseach will perhaps look back at the day he was appointed and wonder why he deserved such rotten luck.

I think there is very little doubt that if Bertie Ahern had decided to call it a day immediately after the 2007 election – or even a year or so before it – Brian Cowen would still have become Taoiseach.

And there is every possibility that with a bit of time available to him, and the advice that is available from all sorts of sources around the world to any Taoiseach, he might well have sussed that we were heading for a very bad fall.

ONE of his first acts as party leader was to cancel the infamous Galway tent. Could it be he realised early on that the relationship between his party and the builders and developers who kept the tent going wasn’t just unhealthy, it was also at the root of the terrible damage about to be unleashed on the Irish economy?

Of course it was too late then.

We’ve all heard time and again about the dozens of different ways in which the Government pandered to developers – tax breaks, planning breaks, cosy tender arrangements, more and more incentivisation to an industry that was overheating to the point of boiling.

And we know now how damaging were the relationships and inter-relationships within the banking sector that made regulation impossible and almost meaningless.

By the time Brian Cowen became Taoiseach, he was sitting on a ticking timebomb. Of course, when that bomb exploded, it was never going to be the politicians who suffered most.

All over Ireland, the main effect of the last 365 days for many people has been the evaporation of hope and its replacement by fear.

Not everyone was consumed by greed throughout the Celtic Tiger, but most of us were conditioned to believe it would never end and all of us hoped it would help us to build a decent legacy.

Sadly for us, after a year in office, the Government doesn’t seem to have a clue about how to rebuild the legacy. What a waste of 365 days.