Change was promised. It hasn’t arrived

HOPE springs eternal.

Hope is what we need right now, and bags of it. As a New Year dawns, the world as we know it isn’t looking too hot.

There is still a sense of unreality about what is unfolding. In one way, the last 12 months have been a continuation of the previous three years. Unemployment is still crawling up. The waves of immigration grew taller. Austerity bit at all levels of society, but as always those who inhabit the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder suffered most.

Through it all, hope stayed alive. When first the late Brian Lenihan, and then Michael Noonan, told us that the worst was behind us, we wanted to believe. While it would hurt, we could live with the bondholders unburnt, if only there was some distant sighting of the end of austerity.

Then, offshore, the darkest cloud yet to strike was making itself known. Who out there, apart from anoraks and economists, knew anything about sovereign debt before the winter of our discontent?

One of the biggest questions that will have to be faced in the coming months is whether the euro currency can survive. More to the point, if it does survive, will this country either exit or be ejected from it?

The future of the euro alone is not in the same league as the plagues and wars that have punctuated history. But if it were to end in a messy fashion, all of the available evidence suggests that an economic depression is likely to befall the developed world.

What will that mean? Lucinda Creighton, the busy-bee Europe Junior Minister, reckons it could hurl us back to the 1950s. We can only hope that she is exaggerating for effect, but nobody really knows.

If Creighton’s toll of doom rings true, then the country is in for a serious ride. Living standards in the 1950s were much lower than now, but more to the point, the nature of society has changed. It’s difficult to see how social unrest couldn’t follow a major shock to the economy like that.

On the other hand, there are people in the know who claim that the end of the euro, or Ireland’s participation in it, could be a boon to our export-led economy.

And yet, and yet… it is possible to see a way out of the morass. It is possible that a deep recession can be averted and that hope can once again come out to play. The euro is not yet dead, and a belief persists that despite all the game playing, the politicians and the Germans will all pull back from the brink.

There may well be a referendum on the deal agreed at the European summit earlier this month. For the last few weeks the talk has been that any such poll would be a vote on whether the country should continue in the European Union. There is a strong case to continue within the currency, just as there is a strong case to exit it at a time of our choosing.

If the referendum comes to pass in the spring, hope demands that debate be conducted in a manner befitting the seriousness of the vote. Scaremongering has been a feature of previous referendum campaigns on both sides. This time it’s for real.

The big question being bandied about is whether a deal on the debt can be done in return for a yes vote. I can’t see how this would be possible. We are no longer in treaty territory where one country can hold up the whole shebang.

The debt will have to be addressed at some stage as it is simply unsustainable. It’s just that it may have to wait until the current crisis subsides.

But above all, whatever comes to past, is it too much to hope that the debate to come will be conducted with a smidgen of honesty?

All the indications are that it will not. For despite the calamity that has befallen the country, politics continues to be conducted as it ever was.

The most recent example of this was the call from some TDs for civil disobedience in the face of the household charge. There is no principle at issue here. It’s all about making a political point in a deeply hypocritical manner. The move towards a property tax is both socially just and economically necessary. The fact that it took the intervention of the troika to point out the bleedin’ obvious shows how removed from reality things got in this country.

On the Government side of the Oireachtas, it’s no less cynical. The general election last February was supposed to mark a departure from old ways. It did nothing of the sort. The extravagant promises made by Fine Gael and Labour then were even more cynical than the usual fare because of the state we’re in.

Enda Kenny in his address to the nation reaffirmed a commitment to hold a referendum on the future of the Seanad. This is his fob to political reform. Instead of addressing the real issues that led us to this juncture — the hoarding of power in the Executive — he wants to throw the Seanad to the masses.

The governing parties thus have no problem holding a referendum on what is effectively a Mickey Mouse issue, yet it baulks at doing the same when a powerful vested interest is involved. We were told after the budget that there were constitutional problems with addressing the issue of upward-only rent reviews. There’s two chances of the Government holding a referendum on that.

The new politics we were promised was supposed to include fairness: again, an empty promise. In the budget, a few scraps purporting to be fairness were thrown to the great unwashed. Retired politicians and civil servants getting pensions of over €100,000 were hit with a reduction in their wads. Wow! The fleecing of these padded out pensions amounted to €80 a week for those at the upper end of around €150,000.

In the same budget it was proposed that youths with disabilities have their payments cut by €88 a week to €100. This is what passes for fairness by the bright, new, shining Government.

Then when a stink blew up in the media, some of the cuts for kids with disabilities were reversed. Once more the political balance sheet rather than any notion of fairness was the driving force behind the measure.

We could hope that this culture will shift in the New Year but there is no reason whatsoever to do so. Any real change will have to come from the ground up. As of now the general populace comforts itself by bitching and moaning about politics, but, as surveys showed in the last general election, most voters are primarily interested in what a TD can do for them locally rather than voting on the basis of who would be a good legislator. As long as that situation pertains, we will continue to get the politicians we deserve.

Let’s hope that in some ways the coming year will be a brighter one. Have a Happy New Year, and in the absence of prosperity, let’s hope at least that it might be a debt-relieved one.