Thanks to the youth, I remain optimistic about our future

I AM INDEBTED to George Hook.

Not financially, of course, but for making me think. I was listening to his programme last week when he interviewed a man who had decided to bring his family back to Ireland after a number of years living abroad. This young man (I’m sorry I didn’t pick up his name), had written an article about the things he had discovered about the Ireland to which he had returned. The Luas and the disabled access in DART stations were just two of the things he mentioned.

And then I listened to George again, last Saturday morning and he had Tom McGurk on, talking about different strands of Northern nationalism. In his usual mild-mannered understated way, McGurk was blathering on about how different Northern Catholics were, depending on what part of Northern Ireland they were from. The only thing they might have in common, said he, was that no Northern nationalist worth his salt would want to have anything to do with this god-awful catastrophic monstrosity of a country down here.

It made me wonder. I admit I did spend a moment or two on how long we’d have to mourn if the bold McGurk decided he couldn’t stand us for a moment longer and took himself off back to Brockagh, Co Tyrone (that’s where Wikipedia tells me he’s from).

But there’s a deeper point, isn’t there? When Tom McGurk calls us a total failure, or Eamonn Dunphy announces that Ireland is a dump, as he did there a while ago on The Late Late Show, are they right? Are we really that bad? (Mind you, maybe Dunphy didn’t mean it. On Sunday I turned on Marian Finucane, and heard him suggesting that we should all give a free day’s work for the country, as the Germans did when they were trying to reconstruct theirs . Why would you do that for a dump?)

We’re no failure. And this is no dump. Sure, we’re in deep trouble right now, and it’s going to take us a long time to get out of it. One of the things I find really hard to forgive is the ideological and policy disasters that got us into this mess.

Throughout the era of Harney, McCreevey, McDowell and Ahern, there was a terrible bias against all forms of public spending. It wasn’t the public servant bashing that passes for so much of public commentary now, but the private sector was seen as king in those not so long ago days. The private sector was entrusted with the building of our roads, the running of our health system, even the regeneration of our disadvantaged communities. Budget after budget contained incentive after incentive for an already bloated construction sector.

And some of the same commentators who are so angry now about how much we have failed and what a dump we are — Dunphy, McGurk and Eoghan Harris — were cheerleaders for all that stuff. They wined and dined with the political principals and they sneered at anyone who opposed them.

To be fair to him, Dunphy changed his mind. He saw how greed had corrupted their system and he recoiled from it. But some of the others defended them right to the end. And now they spend their time sneering at the people who have to try to put it right.

But enough of all that — it wasn’t what I set out to say in the first place. What I really wanted to say is, that despite all our troubles, despite the mistakes we made and can still make, this country is no failure. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t see stuff we should be really proud of as Irish people.

It may be a small (and biased), example, but the other night I went to a production of two short Harold Pinter plays in the tiny New Theatre in Temple Bar in Dublin. Powerful, polemic writing, astonishingly good acting, and brilliant direction. My daughter Sarah was the director. In the teeth of the recession, she has done the extraordinarily entrepreneurial thing (I wouldn’t have the nerve), of starting a theatre company with several friends, all fine young actors who will make it big if they get half a chance.

They’re not wallowing in failure, or dismissing their country as a dump. Instead they’re putting themselves and their talent on the hazard, trying to see if they can produce something that will attract an audience. And they’re not doing it the easy way — if you want to make life easy, you don’t specialise in Harold Pinter. The play was my reason for being in the little theatre. But what a discovery that was — a beautiful atmospheric little building, part bookshop part theatre, in the heart of Temple Bar. The Project Theatre is a couple of doors away, and Smock Alley is just up the road. They’re all selling seats in the recession.

And it’s not confined to Dublin. In the relatively recent past, in the course of my work, I’ve seen productions in the Pavilion in Dun Laoghaire; in an absolutely beautiful theatre in Birr; in a purpose-built venue in Thurles; and in every venue I’ve seen work of the highest class, all put on by young Irish people who are determined to give expression to talent.

I’VE been on the road a fair bit lately, because of the referendum campaign — I will come back to that subject again. The campaign itself is attracting a high volume of young volunteers and quite a few leaders. I’m not going to name them, but I have to tell you I’m in awe of their energy, their commitment, and their can-do spirit. They’re totally passionate about causing change for the better, and just as passionate about knocking a bit of fun out of it as they go.

But the thing about sitting on a campaign bus is that you see the country afresh, through different eyes. I got a text on Sunday from the bus as it drove through Kerry: “We did five Masses this morning, and now we’re off to canvass the county football final!”. Some things, it seems, never change, and yet change is happening.

It’s happening because we have brilliant young people. The strange thing I find about them is that they don’t feel let down at all. They find life a struggle, many of them, but they have enormous strength. They build lasting friendships, they create value out of nothing, they know how to enjoy themselves. I know it will be dismissed as a cliché, but they’re the future of this country. And as long as they are, this country is no dump. They might be preoccupied with finding their own way through the political and economic mess we have created, but they know that’s temporary.

When they take over, they’ll do a decent job. They’ll build on the strengths we’ve always had as a people, and they’ll add their own world view and their own sophistication. We mightn’t have built a perfect legacy, but because our young people are as gutsy and able as they are, our future is in pretty good hands.