Confidence within is key to our recovery

TAOISEACH Enda Kenny emphasised that actions are being taken to restore economic confidence. The fluctuations of the rating agencies are a reflection of a lack of international confidence, but this also applies within the country itself.

On coming to power in the United States during the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt famously told the American people that what they had to fear most was “fear itself”. That is as applicable in this country today as it was in the United States back then.

Current fears must be banished by the restoration of confidence, and all segments of society need to work together to build that necessary confidence. Social partnership was credited with helping to rescue the country’s economy from the last recession. Some people abused that concept during the Celtic Tiger years, but now the need for real social partnership has never been greater.