Unity of focus and purpose is essential

WHEN she addressed the Bundestag yesterday morning, German chancellor Angela Merkel could have been Taoiseach Enda Kenny speaking to the Dáil.

Obviously the resources available to each leader are on a very different scale but the message was almost indistinguishable — batten down the hatches, we’re in for a long and stormy passage before we even sight dry land. We may even be in for a long and stormy passage before we can agree the best course to dry land.

Ms Merkel said there was no easy fix to Europe’s difficulties — more than 30 years in the making — and that resolving it will “take years”.

These realities probably apply even more sharply to Ireland and will animate discussions after a difficult but hopefully fair budget next week.

Just as Ms Merkel has no stardust to sprinkle on Europe’s problems to make them disappear, neither has the Fine Gael/Labour coalition any to sprinkle on ours. If we have any ambition to restore stability to our public finances we don’t have too many choices. None are quick or easy.

Radical but unified action, here and in Europe, is needed if the situation is not to overwhelm any hopes of making the age of austerity and head-wrecking uncertainty as short as can be. Already there has been far too much prevarication, too much head-scratching, but how else could it be?

So many national governments, so may different needs and philosophies, so many conflicting objectives, but most of all, so many different levels of indebtedness or solvency make an agreed response almost impossibly difficult but one must be found. So many different cultures and so many different attitudes to funding the state play their part too. This applies equally to the EU, to individual member states and to the citizens of all of those states.

In the face of this almost insurmountable diversity, Ms Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy want a new set of tougher EU rules governing national budgets to try to protect the currency. Proposals detailing these changes will be put to yet another EU summit next week. Speaking in Toulon on Thursday night, Mr Sarkozy suggested that this might mean restructuring the community’s founding treaty.

Unfortunately Ms Merkel and Mr Sarkozy do not agree on the immediate role the European Central Bank might play in this process. The French leader seems confident that the ECB is about to finally intervene but the German chancellor is adamant that it will not. So, once again, confusion undermines hope. Unless these fundamental issues are resolved then any prospect of new rules to protect the euro seems pretty remote.

So too, sadly, does the sense of common purpose vital in Ireland next week.

Is it too much to hope that all politicians and the myriad lobby groups might see the bigger picture and work together to resolve our great difficulties? Some may imagine the budget as just another set of charges imposed by a Government indifferent to their difficulties. Our vulnerable situation dictates that it is very much more than that. It will be a test of our ability to recognise the great threats hanging over this society, our ability to put aside our differences and our immediate ambitions and come together to overcome them.

Let us hope we are all equal to it.