Despite the economic catastrophe that hit Ireland last year, little has changed in the way Irish people view politics – or in the system itself, writes FINTAN O'TOOLE
IN THE days leading up to the arrival of the troika a year ago, the taoiseach, Brian Cowen, assured the Dáil that there was no “impending sense of crisis”. At the time, the phrase provoked despairing laughter at home and mockery abroad. And yet, a year on, it seems unhappily accurate. An extraordinary, tumultuous and shameful set of events unfolded in November 2010, amounting in essence to the end of the first Irish republic. But there has not been, in the proper sense, any crisis at all.
Crisis is a term rooted in Greek tragedy, meaning “a decisive moment or turning point in a dramatic action”. It is a moment of suffering and confusion, a time when everything that seemed to be fixed becomes suddenly unstable. The events of November 2010, with things spinning wildly out of control, certainly meet this definition. But the point of crisis in Greek tragedy is that it leads to catharsis, a sense of things being purged.
Václav Havel, then president of the Czech Republic and himself a distinguished dramatist, used precisely this metaphor while addressing his nation in 1997, when it had been hit by the twin scandals of political corruption and a banking bubble. “However unpleasant and stressful and even dangerous what we are going through may be, it can also be instructive and a force for good because it can call forth a catharsis, the intended outcome of ancient Greek tragedy. That means a feeling of profound purification and redemption. A feeling of newborn hope. A feeling of liberation.”
From that perspective, a cynic might be tempted to remark that the Irish are not even capable of having a proper crisis. We’ve had the unpleasant, painful and dangerous bit – and we’re going to go on having it for the foreseeable future. But we don’t do catharsis. Purification is for the health spa and redemption for soppy movies.
And sovereignty? Well, perhaps that’s for the late-night, drunken ballad sessions, when we get all weepy about the boys that bate the Black and Tans. In the real daylight world, it seems to be something we can do without. In the short-term at least, Ireland has settled remarkably comfortably into its new position as a protectorate of the international technocracy.
A troika, in its original meaning, is a carriage drawn by three horses: it seems that the Irish people are content to be backseat passengers, even if the road is horribly bumpy and the destination is endless gloom.
It is true, of course, that the Irish did one big thing in response to the implosion of their State – they delivered an almighty hiding to Fianna Fáil. The biggest electoral earthquake in the history of the State is not nothing. But the idea of a revolution at the ballot box has to be qualified in three very significant ways.
Firstly, it is not yet clear whether Fianna Fáil is dead or merely sleeping. Seán Gallagher nearly snatched the presidency with a campaign that re-energised the party’s grassroots.
Secondly, Fianna Fáil policy is still the template the Government is following, both in relation to the ruinous bank bailout and the deal done a year ago with the troika. Essentially, the political revolution consists of having different (and more competent) local politicians fronting the troika’s unaltered plan.
And thirdly, there is very little evidence that the political culture in which Fianna Fáil thrived has undergone a profound change. The How Ireland Voted 2011 study asked voters what, in the midst of this profound national crisis, they wanted from their TDs. The answer from a majority of voters, especially those outside Dublin, is that they want their politicians to concentrate more on local issues. They declared local concerns to be more important than political parties (and surely, by implication, national policies and ideologies). They expressed “general satisfaction with the kind of service provided by politicians”. And they did not want the electoral system to be changed.
What a majority of voters want, in other words, is a continuation of the clientelist culture, in which the TD is expected not to hold government to account on behalf of citizens but to provide a “service” to the individual voter and the local area. Crisis? What crisis? It is a rather astonishing reality that for all the catastrophic consequences of long-term misgovernment, there is precious little interest in sweeping political change.
It is not that Irish people have any great confidence in their national political institutions: only the banks rank below the Dáil and the political parties in public confidence. It is, rather, that most are prepared to put up with bad government so long as the local political machines, which have operated in one form or another since the time of Daniel O’Connell, keep functioning. In the great global crisis of the 21st century, 19th century politics is still our comfort blanket.
The idea of a new republic emerging out of the ashes of the old one has, of course, been articulated by a number of writers and, most significantly, by the new President, Michael D Higgins. His election suggests that it does have real potential – if it can be given a political context in which to take root. But it is far from clear that the Government is capable of the kind of dynamic reforming project that would create the “feeling of profound purification and redemption” that would make sense of the crisis.
It is not just that there has been a lack of accountability under the old system that continues to operate, though that is all too evident. The idea that an official in the Department of Finance who ignored warnings that official figures for Government debt were out by €3.6 billion would be named by his superiors, let alone made answerable, is still unthinkable. Michael Noonan told us that “I don’t think the big issue is chasing an official in the Department of Finance who made a mistake”. Board and judicial appointments continue, with few exceptions, to be made in the same old way. The fabulous pension entitlements of members of the nomenklatura remain in place.
Even more discouraging, though, is that there is little sign of a real determination at the top to drive a reform agenda. The first big test, the constitutional amendment to give Oireachtas committees powers to hold inquiries, has failed – in large part because the Government’s campaign was at once arrogant and lackadaisical. (The Referendum Commission got the final wording from the Government on September 23rd and had to print its advice to voters four days later.)
Equally, the much-heralded package of public-sector reforms unveiled on Thursday was startlingly light on detail in relation to the most important aspect of all: the functioning of democracy. It had three proposals, none fleshed out: restoring and extending freedom of information legislation, regulation of lobbyists and protection of whistleblowers. Each is an important part of a reform package. There was nothing, though, on the strengthening of parliamentary scrutiny, the creation of real local democracy, the way in which political parties are funded or the need to make senior civil servants accountable for the decisions they take.
There is, in other words, no “impending sense of crisis”. The old adage suggests that it is a shame to waste a good crisis. There’s a real possibility that we may be doing just that.
