Planning for recovery - The time has come to bite the bullet

THE Cabinet yesterday discussed Colm McCarthy’s An Bord Snip Nua’s suggestions on how we can try to save this country from bankruptcy. It must have been a chastening experience for most ministers, especially those who have dedicated the last decades of their lives to trying to realise their vision of a brighter, better Ireland.

They, as any rational person might, would have been shocked by the enormity, the depth and the harshness of the decisions that have to be made. Even their insider knowledge of what might be proposed would not have softened the blow or eased the sense that we will be fighting a rearguard action for several years to come.

Any remaining hopes of realising the grand ambitions that become the legacy of effective political careers must be put to one side for the foreseeable future. We, and so many other countries, just can’t pay for them.

It must have been doubly chastening for those – nearly the entire Cabinet – who advanced through the patronage of Bertie Ahern, who blindly refused to act on plausible suggestions that our pre-collapse economy was far too dependent on the construction sector, that our financial institutions needed tighter supervision and that credit had become far too freely available.

Our Taoiseach Brian Cowen would be less than the man we all need him to be if he was not made uncomfortable by the enormity of the consequences of ignoring those few brave voices who challenged the status quo of recent years.

Let us hope they, and the rest of us too, learned the lesson and that we all will have the courage to apply it in the future.

As Mr McCarthy’s proposals become clearer over the next while it is likely that many of us will need another kind of courage. The kind of courage needed to face unpleasant, uncomfortable realities. If the report, and a later report on the Commission for Taxation, are to have the kind of impact required then every sector will feel pain.

Though the exercise is primarily about restoring stability to the public finances it must do more. It must be a catalyst for the restoration of the social equity so undermined by the huge divisions that have been allowed develop between public and private sector employees.

We must rely on the Commission on Taxation to propose measures that will be at least as informed by social justice as they will be by the great need to foster business.

However, An Bord Snip, and subsequently the Commission for Taxation, can only propose and it is up to our political leaders to decide what will happen, when it will happen and what it will achieve.

We are in dire straits and this report, and the one on taxation, must be used as the basis for a recovery plan. The proposals may not please us but the alternative is far too awful to contemplate.

It’s time to bite the bullet, make the recovery plan and stick to it no matter what.