A new year - Reasons for guarded optimism

In 1933 when American president Franklin D Roosevelt declared in his first inaugural speech that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” he was speaking in the context of the Great Depression and efforts to revive the US economy.

In 1968, Martin Luther King spoke similar words in the cauldron of the battle for civil rights and racial equality.

Both men were echoing a remark made 400 years earlier by the English philosopher Francis Bacon, who spoke of fear as the inner enemy and said: “Nothing is to be feared but fear itself. Nothing grievous but to yield to grief.”

The father of modern scientific inquiry was addressing the fortunes of mankind. Like Roosevelt and King, he, too, was speaking in an era of change and turmoil, but also one of great hope that ushered in the Age of Enlightenment and provided the foundation stone of modern civilisation.

As a nation in the midst of another era of change and turmoil, we could do worse than take Bacon’s reassuring and graceful words and apply them to ourselves as we enter 2014.

With any new year comes a sense of hope and confidence that things will improve. This year is already redolent with expectation that our grinding economic stagnation will finally give way to growth and that the green shoots of prosperity will begin to choke the scourge of high unemployment.

There are hopeful signs in a number of sectors. Our tourist industry is predicting the creation of up to 6,000 jobs in 2014. More than 7 million people visited Ireland in 2013, spending €4bn, the best year for tourism since 2009. Agriculture has battled the recession better than any other industrial sector and our exports continue to expand. The pharmaceutical industry — despite some setbacks — remains strong.

But we still have to repair our banks which are barely functioning. We must also address our education sector — particularly at third level — to ensure that it is fit to address the needs of a 21st economy and society.

We need to set aside our fear and brace ourselves for the tasks ahead. We remain suspended between hope and uncertainty — walking a tightrope with a measure of fear and trepidation that it could all go wrong and that we will, once again, find ourselves trapped in a cycle of recession.

What is needed above all in 2014 is unselfish and purposeful political leadership with no agenda other than to improve the lives of the people they represent. This will take strength and fortitude but, above all, courage. This must be allied to entrepreneurship shown by business leaders and a determination to do things better — fail better, if necessary — and make things happen to bring about a brighter future for us all.

But 2014 will not just be about the economy or solely about Irish concerns. We may live on an island but no nation can afford to be one in its thinking and expect to prosper.

There are signs of hope in other ways. We have a new sense of realism in the newly enlarged EU on the issue of continuing austerity. We have a US president chastened by startling revelations of wrongdoing by his armed forces abroad. We have a new pope who has, in the nine months since he was chosen, shown a great deal of courage and determination to make real changes in the moribund monolith that is the Catholic Church.

If we show courage over the next 12 months, we have nothing to fear.