A tale of two Irelands

COMMENT

IT seems to me that we now have two Irelands. One is Enda Kenny’s Ireland that tells us everything in the garden is rosy, we are getting out of the recession and into a bright new future.
The other Ireland is the one that most of us are living in. In this Ireland each day brings more bad news and the recession is going to continue for at least a generation.
Enda Kenny’s Ireland promises 200,000 new jobs. The other Ireland announces the closure of factories and shops and lengthening dole queues up and down the country.
The visit of Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping to this country and to this county at the weekend made most of us proud. The fact that Ireland was the only European country Mr Xi visited on his trip made some of us sit up and take notice. Perhaps we have more to offer than we might have realised, we said. And we saw that the visit could open up the huge Chinese market to Irish exports, while at the same time encouraging Chinese tourists to holiday in Ireland.
However, Mr Xi had no sooner departed our shores than we were reminded by Fergus Finlay of the children’s charity Bernardos about the reality of Ireland for so many people here.
He said it is “starkly and painfully clear” to anyone working with children and families across the country that the recession is making the deepest cuts where it could be least afforded.
“All of us in the field could tell stories of families having to turn to money lenders just to be able to put food on the table or pay the heating bill to keep the house warm in the winter,” he said. Writing in Tuersday’s Irish Examiner, Mr Finlay quoted from recent figures published by the Central Statistics Office, which showed that since the recession started, about two-thirds of households have cut back their spending on clothing and footwear. More than half of households have cut back their spending on groceries and more than half have cut back on going out. Holidays abroad were also targeted by just under half of all households.
So that’s the real Ireland for most of the people living in this country.
Enda Kenny and his Government feel it is incumbent on them to paint a rosy picture. And if they ever acknowledge that some people are having to make huge sacrifices, they feel all they have to do is blame Fianna Fáil for all that.
However, they are targeting the same people that Fianna Fáil targeted to get us out of the mess. They are targeting the people who have to resort to backstreet money lenders to help them put bread on the table and heat their houses in winter.
It is the Government who should be looking after those people. It is the Government who should be paying to put food on the table and coal in the grate. Instead, it is the Government who is taking from them, cutting benefits, allowances and all other payments that were designed to help poor people in their hours of need.
Why is the Government doing this? To ensure that all those reckless bankers and gamblers don’t lose sleep at night.
Blaming Fianna Fáil is a cop-out. The Government is meekly carrying out the same policies that Fianna Fáil implemented and Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore condemned so bitterly a year ago.
That’s why people are so angry today. They were given to understand that once Fianna Fáil were kicked out, everything would be different. The new coalition Government was going to stand up to Europe, the bankers and the developers. This was going to be the proud new Ireland that would not be dictated to by Frankfurt, Brussels or Paris.
But Enda Kenny’s Ireland is one of pretence. He can stand shoulder to shoulder with Angela Merkel or David Cameron. He can play hurling with Xi Jinping or handball with Nicolas Sarkozy. But, in reality, it is they who call the shots. To paraphrase what the late Jim Kemmy said of Willie O’Dea, he can act like Mighty Mouse at home but is like Mickey Mouse abroad.
I don’t want to be cruel to Enda Kenny because he is a man I have always liked as I liked his father, Henry, before him. However, I cannot see him standing up to the big guns of Germany or France. He just hasn’t got the bottle. No more than has any member of this Government. See how they caved in to some domestic pressure from the people opposed to paying the septic tank charges. It’s a pity the people of this country who rely on the Government to help them put some food on the table wouldn’t have some of the same kind of muscle.
I certainly would not be as cruel to Enda as the former Fine Gael voter who said to me, “the good news is that Enda is going to China; the bad news is that he has a return ticket”.
He may yet turn out to be a good Taoiseach but that will depend on a lot of circumstances during his term or terms of office. And he may be lucky.
There are those who think Jack Lynch was the best Taoiseach we ever had. He was certainly the most popular. Until his luck ran out. I think he was the weakest. I believe that Garret FitzGerald and Charles Haughey had the potential to be the best. But things didn’t work out that way for either of them and luck had nothing to do with that.
Enda Kenny has had a lot of luck so far. He was lucky he was not elected Taoiseach in 2007. He was lucky with the weather last weekend during the Chinese visit. He may also be lucky with the world economy over the next four years.
Hopefully, it is his optimistic view of Ireland for the future that will prevail.