We could improve our lot by 2025 - if we make some changes, writes Fintan O'Toole
Ireland in 2025 might be a much better place. We are living now in a society that, to a greater extent than ever before, has real choices.Global events are not within our control, but they are not entirely beyond it either. The future is not completely predictable, but we do have a fair idea of the challenges we are facing. We can neither predict nor determine the course of the next 20 years, but we can strengthen our collective capacity to react creatively and intelligently to changes that are inevitable.
What kind of place would we like to inhabit? This is not an especially hard question to answer. Most people in most societies want pretty much the same things. A life of dignity, with time for pleasure, life-giving relationships with other people, a capacity for personal fulfilment and freedom from hunger, fear, disease and oppression. Most people also know that they will face unavoidable sorrows. Accidents will happen. Love will dissolve. Diseases, old and new, will weaken our bodies and bring us pain. Death will come to those we love and to ourselves. There is a reason why Utopia is another word for "nowhere". There is also a reason why the dominant emotion in the face of the future is fear. Especially for those of us who feel that we live in a pretty good place at a pretty good time, it is natural to assume that change will be for the worse.
The last decades of the 20th century were a bad time for one kind of Utopians, and the first years of the 21st have been a bad time for another kind. The collapse of Communism marked the end of the largest and most coherent Utopian project in human history. The debacle in Iraq has shown most of the world (though not yet the American public as a whole) the idiocy of another kind of Utopianism - the neo-conservative dream that the whole planet can be transformed into an American empire.
At the same time, many of the institutions that were founded on a wave of post-second World War optimism - the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund - have lost credibility as forces for the creation of a better world. Big global projects like the Kyoto Treaty on climate change and the UN's Millennium Goals have faltered because of lack of enthusiasm from the US and other powers.
Yet the loss of faith in the possibility of a better world - the precondition for a better Ireland - is in some respects just as dangerous as unbridled Utopianism. Collective institutions, at the local, national and international levels, still have the power to shape the future. If they lose their nerve and surrender to "market forces", they will shape it negatively by simply allowing the worst of present-day trends to continue. If they retain a faith in the capacity of collective action to mitigate the effects of the bad things we know are coming, and to deliver on the positive possibilities that are opening up, they can shape it for the better.
One cause for sober optimism about the Ireland of 2025 is that the connection between values - social justice, respect for the environment, an open pluralist democracy and a high level of cultural creativity - and economic survival is becoming clear. Up to now, there has been a general feeling that "pragmatism" is at odds with a sense of values and that the pursuit of money for its own sake is the only driver of economic success.
The irony is that if we continue with this economic "pragmatism" we won't have much of an economy to be pragmatic about in 20 years. Tackling poverty, ending the exclusion of a large minority from the mainstream of society, making immigrants feel comfortable here, respecting and sustaining a high-quality physical environment, creating a decent public infrastructure and encouraging learning and creativity aren't airy-fairy notions promulgated by the chattering classes. They are economic necessities.
Up to 2010 alone, Ireland will need 420,000 new workers. Some 300,000 of these workers will require higher-level qualifications. In this context, the educational consequences of poverty represent an economic millstone. The hard-nosed Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), which reported last June on what needs to be done if we are to sustain economic development, pointed out that "the failure of approximately 17 per cent of young people to complete the Leaving Certificate is a problem both for the individuals concerned and for the economy as a whole. The consequences for the economy will be amplified by the decline in the size of the school-leaving cohort in the years ahead."
It also pointed out that our smug belief in the quality of our current educational system is dangerously misplaced: "Despite a widely held belief that the Irish educational system is world-class, a comparison of Ireland's performance relative to competitor countries shows that there is considerable room for improvement. For example, in mathematical and scientific literacy, both of which will be crucial in the future, Ireland is ranked 9th and 16th respectively in the OECD." The miserable provision for adult and second-chance education was also highlighted, with a flat prediction that with current policies, "Ireland is unlikely to achieve the Government's target of 25 per cent of adult learners by 2015."
We need a huge investment in public infrastructure. A recent World Economic Forum survey found that Irish infrastructure was poorly developed and inefficient, relative to most other developed countries, and ranked Ireland 15th out of 16 countries. We need to stop pandering to the short-term interests of companies and individuals who make money out of environmental damage. The ESG pointed out that "it is essential that high environmental standards be maintained, not only to protect the country's international image, but also because the natural environment is a competitive advantage and a key factor in enhancing quality of life."
We need to stop the trend towards a racial definition of Irish citizenship and to construct an open, civic culture, so that the immigrants we have to attract will feel that they can be at home in a community of equals. We need to invest in the arts, design, the creative industries and intellectual life, since, as the ESG pointed out, future prosperity will depend on a society of people who can "disseminate, adapt and use data, insights, intuition, and experience". At the moment, Ireland does all of these things badly or half-heartedly. We are planning, albeit by default, for failure. But we still have the opportunity to think ahead, to imagine a more decent place and to make it happen.