The IMF have become more like a mother-in-law after the bailout

During the boom, we heard a couple of warnings from the IMF but we took no notice, writes Colm O’Regan

THE year is closing in. This time reminds people of different things. Autumn colours, the smell of woodsmoke, the sounds of young lads throwing bangers on the ground next to you and running away laughing, the feeling of looking forward to getting the extra hour in bed and then staying up two hours later than you normally would, thereby making a net loss.

Everyone has some memory triggered by this time. I think about debating. There, I’ve said it. I did debating in secondary school. You’re probably surprised that someone as hard-partying as me would have been involved in something as academic as school debating.

A lot of the debates were organised by Concern, who would choose a topic for debate — usually about inequality — and one school would propose the motion and the other school team would oppose. The passage of time has probably distorted my memory but it seems to me now that no matter what the debate topic, the IMF and the World Bank were involved. Our teacher would distribute photocopies from books with case studies. Typically it would be about a country that was tipping along nicely. Maybe it didn’t have a lot of roads or sodastreams but they seemed happy enough.

But then it would all change. They’d be lumbered with a dictator who wanted to build a 300ft golden statue of his own ear lobe and needed money to pay for it, or some eejit would come back from abroad with a Harvard degree and, anxious to impress, would suggest “Why don’t we get the IMFnWorld Bank in?”

Next thing you knew, the rainforests were gone, the fish were poisoned, they’d paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

I didn’t really know the difference between the IMF and the World Bank. They were sort of mentioned in the same breath, like Cagney and Lacey, or Dastardly and Muttley.

I’m always reminded of Pinky and the Brain this time of the year because it comes up to the anniversary of the IMF arrival in the country.

Seeing them here was a stark realisation that they weren’t just something that happened to people in countries that had to cut down their rainforests. They were happening to us.

During the boom, we heard a couple of warnings from the IMF but we took no notice. Why don’t you go back and fix your mess in Argentina, we chortled. We’ll take care of our own business.

And suddenly they were here at the door. Such had been their mystique that I half expected them to be wearing sort of robo-cop outfits with an insignia emblazoned on the shoulder. Maybe an emblem representing a muscular arm holding a calculator and wagging a disapproving finger.

They were just men and women in suits, with degrees in accounting.

Accountants who proved very handy politically, as it turned out.

Because for every single unpopular decision taken for the next five years, the IMF were the stern parent.

The Government could say ‘well I’d love to give you that darling, but your mother would hit the roof if she found out’.

As we’ve exited the bailout, they’ve become more like a mother-in-law. Occasional visits and we have to make sure everything is tidy when they arrive.

And the debate about whether they were good or bad goes on.