Positive thinking - Optimism will follow real change

AT every opportunity Government voices suggest we need to be more optimistic.

We need to look forward rather than backward we are told — dmonished might be a better word — time after time.

The banks play their part too, suggesting, as they did again yesterday, that credit is available to those with viable proposals.

If the banks set aside some of the money realised through property fire sales to pay subcontractors or suppliers left out on a limb when various developers failed, it might go some way to creating optimism.

Better still, if the banks properly acknowledged their role in our difficulties it might encourage optimism. If they occasionally filled a senior position with someone who was not mired in the scandals of recent years that would encourage optimism too.

Yesterday the Construction Industry Federation, supported by IBEC and ICTU, brought more “positive” pressure to bear on the Government encouraging them to continue to invest in large capital projects. IBEC said that €5.5bn a year should be spent over the next five years. Optimism does not come cheaply.

The CIF might do a lot to encourage optimism if it announced that it would help to finish the many housing estates abandoned by builders. Some were CIF members presumably. This would create jobs and encourage optimism too, especially amongst those living in negative equity on these ghost estates.

Doing his bit to sustain the mood yesterday, Taoiseach Brian Cowen, speaking about the possibility that a Chinese trade centre might be established in Athlone thereby creating thousands of jobs, availed of the opportunity to encourage us to be more positive too.

Of course we all want to be more positive but the leap of faith required to believe that China might choose to base an international sales centre on an island off Europe, at a place where there is no airport, high-speed rail link or acceptable broadband services — and, it must be assumed, more hurlers than Mandarin speakers — is challenging.

The plans published yesterday by the Central Bank announcing sweeping reform in financial regulation should be a cause for optimism too. But, as our past underlines, we are far better at making rules than enforcing them. That not one person has been charged in relation to our banking collapse, almost two years after the crisis broke, confirms that.

Yesterday’s news that a Government group considering how the former Irish Steel plant in Cork Harbour might be made safe will not as thoroughly assess the site as it should just adds to the challenge faced by those — the great, great majority — who crave the opportunity to be optimistic. Highly carcinogenic chromium 6 was found at the site and that, though no direct link has been established, cancer rates in nearby Cobh are 37% higher than the national average.

These kind of decisions do not encourage optimism.

Because we foolishly believed that things could only get boomier our faith in blind optimism has been shaken. That won’t change until there is meaningful change in so many areas; until wishful thinking is replaced by substance.

Very little of yesterday’s transparent cheerleading will encourage optimism and that won’t change until Government — and especially Mr Cowen — begin to lead the deep, meaningful change required to make sure that history does not repeat itself.

Is it being too optimistic to hope that he might?