Europe rules

ENSCONCED between the flags of Ireland and the European Union, Taoiseach Enda Kenny addressed the nation on Sunday night to let them know their lives would be made materially worse as a result of the Budget announcement during the week. His main point was, however, that it was not his fault.

His positioning between the two flags was symbolically powerful but inaccurate because he was halfway between the two. The blue flag embroidered with golden stars is where the power resides. The man who physically represented the green, white and gold cannot resist it and the Budgets unveiled by his Government this week are proof of that.
It was in stark contrast to the joint press conference held by Merkel and Sarkozy where, between the leaders, the EU flag was shrouded and all but obscured behind the French and German flags which filled the space behind the respective national leaders.  
During the party political broadcast, rebranded ‘State of the Nation’ to throw us off the scent, the Taoiseach referred on many occasions to “jobs” and “job creation”. In fact, he cannot offer to genuinely back up these utterances with results. If he, as Taoiseach, or his Government, could actually create jobs, they would have done it and would be basking in the well-deserved praise their achievements would garner. Why are Enda Kenny, his party and the Labour Party still attempting to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes to this extent? Kenny’s address was a barefaced piece of nonsense. Pantomime is all well and good in the Christmas season but to offer it in place of genuine political leadership in a time of crisis is not just ignoble, it is callous and utterly bereft of dignity, humility or empathy.
Difficult and unpalatable is how Minister Brendan Howlin described the Budget he delivered on Monday. No one doubted the Budget would be easily described in this way but it is more than stomach-churning to be able to describe the attempts by Irish Government politicians to dress up the swingeing cuts they are imposing as anything else. By taking to the national airwaves to try and sweeten the deal by having the inert gas Taoiseach Enda Kenny waft across the screen to try and justify the savage attacks on the poor is a brutal affront, which should not be forgotten.
What the minister revealed to the public this week was a potentially lethal attack on the concept of social protection. Education, health and the public service generally were subjected to a most brutal attack and given that our social policy in years to come will be determined by technocrats and outside forces, it is unlikely things will ever recover. Just a week ago, the Central Statistics Office released preliminary results from the 2010 Survey on Income and Living Conditions.
“The Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) in Ireland is the official source of data on household and individual income and also provides a number of key national poverty indicators, such as the at risk of poverty rate, the consistent poverty rate and rates of enforced deprivation.”  Among the figures revealed were a 5% drop in the annual disposable income per household in Ireland between 2009 and 2010. Some might say that an average figure like this, while it is clearly bad, may just show that everyone in the country is taking a hit on the income front. This is not the case, however. The results reveal, “…an increase in income inequality between 2009 and 2010 as shown by the quintile share ratio. The ratio showed the average income of those in the highest income quintile was 5.5 times that of those in the lowest income quintile. The ratio was 4.3 one year earlier.” The rich in Ireland are getting richer and the poor are actually getting poorer. Given the kinds of cuts we have been hearing about this week, it is hard to see next year’s figures being anything other than further plummeting down this route. Given the nature of the cuts to public services and supports, the poorest people in the country will be pushed further into the mire of deprivation and inequality. Their health, mental and physical, will suffer enormously and Ireland as a nation, will suffer terribly as a result.
With this in mind, Enda Kenny’s television appearance on Sunday night becomes all the more galling. He sat behind that desk and addressed the people, the destruction of whose lives he is overseeing and tried to tell them that it was someone else’s fault. He tried to wash his hands of his responsibility to the people who elected him and deceive them with empty rhetoric about building a gutsy little nation. In trying to pass the buck, the Taoiseach has only highlighted his ineptitude and cowardice.
He, his party and his Labour coalition party are overseeing the destruction of Ireland’s social fabric and reinforcing a hierarchy with inequality and injustice as its guiding lights.
Children born in Ireland this year will experience lives determined solely by their parents’ income. If they are lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family, they will enjoy all that life has to offer but if they are born into a family beset by poverty, they will have worse health, access to services and less chance of realising their potential. This may seem like a vaguely ridiculous truism until you stand back and ask the question, is this the way it should be? Should the parental bank balance be such a massive determining factor in what kind of life a child experiences? I don’t think I am alone in believing it should not. On top of the wasted potential, which this kind of system facilitates and perpetuates, there is also the misery and suffering it engenders. The Taoiseach will gladly take to the airwaves to tell the nation this current time of austerity is not his fault. Will he also tell a poor child to their face that in the kind of Ireland he presides over, they will not have access to healthcare, education or social support and their parents’ income will determine the kind of life they will have? I doubt this will be happening any time soon.