ANALYSIS:TAOISEACH ENDA Kenny's "State of the Nation" address was clearly intended to create a sense of social solidarity and cautious optimism in advance of the Budget and all the other tough budgets to come in the years ahead.
While clearly warning people about tough times ahead, he stressed the positive outcome the Government was aiming for in the long term rather than focusing on austerity for its own sake.
One of the reasons he was right to address the nation is that it is always difficult for a Government at budget time to get across the message that its duty is to protect the national interest against all the competing interest groups.
This year, more than ever, it is paramount that people accept that sacrifices have to be made in the national interest if the country is ever going to get out of the current mess.
The clear strategy was to take his message directly to the people even if he will almost inevitably face criticism from the media and the Opposition for doing so.
Kenny sought to create a sense of common purpose by referring to the courage being shown by people and emphasising that cuts had started at the top.
His central theme was the need to create jobs and he stressed that all of the hardship now being endured to get the public finances in order was in order to achieve that end.
The Taoiseach’s address certainly will have been effective if it contributes in any way towards generating the sense of national unity required to get through the difficult years ahead.
The Budget announcements today and tomorrow will have to demonstrate a commitment to the national interest rather than the protection of sectional interests if the address is to have a real impact.
Another important reason for delivering his television address was the solemn commitment the Taoiseach gave when he took office to be honest with the people about the challenges ahead and the kind of decisions required to deal with them.
He needed to speak to the nation in order to honour that commitment and to give people the reassurance that they are being told the full truth, in so far as it can be known, about the scale and nature of the problem confronting the country.
The last government failed miserably in the task of communicating the nature of the problem and the measures required to tackle it, and that was one of the reasons why it received such a drubbing in the general election last February.
Brian Cowen was urged by senior cabinet colleagues in the early stages of the crisis to give a televised address but, despite a great deal of media speculation about it, he never took his courage in his hands and went directly to the people.
One of the reasons for that was probably because he had played an important role in the creation of the crisis in the first place and felt therefore that he did not have the moral authority to tell the people what needed to be done.
Another reason may have been the example given by Charles Haughey in his famous “we are living beyond our means” address to the nation in 1980 shortly after he took office.
That speech was a disaster on two fronts. For a start Haughey, in his first term of office, totally reneged on the sentiments he expressed in the television address and went on to preside over a reckless expansion in government borrowing designed to win the 1981 general election.
Then nearly two decades later the public discovered through the McCracken tribunal that at the time he was telling ordinary people they were living beyond their means, Haughey was running up personal debts of over €1 million and refusing to pay his banks what he owed.
Enda Kenny has far more moral authority than either Brian Cowen or Charles Haughey to tell the Irish people what is required. He had no role in creating the current mess and, during his first year in office, his Government has broadly taken the right action to sort it out.
On a personal level he does not have an extravagant lifestyle like Haughey and has led by example in cutting his own salary before asking others to take cuts in theirs.
However, this week’s Budget is only the first step on a long hard road and the Taoiseach will have a huge task in persuading people to take another dose of serious hardship in a year’s time and another the year after that.
And that is assuming that the euro survives and the EU economy holds up reasonably well to the challenges ahead.
If the worst case scenario of a euro zone collapse unfolds, then the hardship of the years to come will be infinitely greater.
The Taoiseach made no bones last night about the need for EU leaders to make firm decisions next Friday and follow that up by implementing them.
His linkage of the 90th anniversary tomorrow of the treaty that marked the founding of this state to the Government’s ambition of restoring Ireland’s sovereignty by 2016 was an appeal to basic patriotism.
Whether it will work only time will tell.
