Doomsday is looming once more, this time in the form of the Government'sproposed smoking ban. But will the prophets of gloom again fall silent as soon as change comes, asks Shane Hegarty.
It'll never work. It will lead to thousands of job losses and may decimate the industry. The country will lose its competitive edge and tourists will turn back mid-flight. We're all, in summary, doomed.
So what policy does that rhetoric refer to? Take your pick. Carbon taxes ("they will drive hard-won investment and employment away from Ireland"), the ban on smoking in the workplace ("it could lead to the loss of 65,000 jobs") or the Intoxicating Liquor Bill ("unworkable").
We are a suspicious people. Legislation that promises sudden change, especially if it involves our social habits, is generally preceded by widespread predictions of catastrophe. Yet when change comes and the sky doesn't fall in we seem to move on as if things had always been thus.
Before the abolition of duty-free zones in 1999, some predicted that all ferry services between Ireland and the Continent would close, that air fares would rise by 20 per cent, that more than 7,000 Irish jobs would be threatened, with 140,000 in danger across Europe. Aer Rianta declared that it would have to raise airport charges by 50 per cent. It was enough to make your blood run colder than the Irish Sea. Yet only a month after duty-free doomsday a sanguine chairman of Aer Rianta announced that airport sales had recovered and that only £1-£2 had been added to ticket prices - something, he said, he didn't think "will make a lot of difference to passengers".
The publicans, in particular, have been a busy lobby group for almost a century, often following an uncomplicated route to the public's paranoia that takes in job losses, higher taxes, loss of personal freedom and general economic ruin. They opposed tougher drink-driving laws upon their introduction 15 years ago, claiming that they would alter radically the social fabric of rural Ireland and lead to the closure of pubs. If you're reading this in a rural pub right now, you'll gather that it never happened.
When the drink-driving rules where hardened in 1994, there was further opposition from the Licensed Vintners' Association, which complained that Christmas trade had been destroyed by stay-at-home drinkers and that hundreds of jobs would be lost. Again, it didn't happen.
Bans on smoking have always been greeted with particular gloom. When smoking was banned from cinemas in 1995 it was argued that it would benefit only the home-video market. Today Ireland has one of the highest cinema-going populations in Europe. Smoking was banned in bingo halls at the same time, leading to claims that the government had signed bingo's death card, yet thousands will be calling "house" across the halls of Ireland this weekend.
The divorce referendum did not lead to the predicted 80,000 cases. Changing currencies on a New Year's Eve did not result in chaos. Even the most popular of laws had their naysayers. When the plastic-bag levy was debated in the Seanad, some questioned the wisdom of the plan, with Senator John Dardis wondering if nets were covered in the Bill, as a creative individual could punch holes in a plastic bag and declare it a net. By the end of its first year the use of plastic bags had dropped by 90 per cent and the levy had become a model to other nations.
Sometimes it is simply a matter of who shouts loudest. For all the opinion polls suggesting that the Irish public is in favour of the ban on smoking, media coverage might suggest otherwise.
"Where the losses are concentrated and the benefits diffused you tend to get a more vocal lobby," says Mary Daly, professor of modern Irish history at University College Dublin. "In the case of banning smoking in pubs, the advantage will be that the benefit will be spread across millions. The disadvantages, such as they are, mean it will hit publicans. Now it's much easier to organise publicans than it is to organise a meeting for those who are irritated by smoke."
It is a common pattern, she says, and utterly predictable. It was seen with the duty-free debate, just as it is with the long-running arguments over waste incinerators and dumps, where benefits they might bring to a wider population are less likely to be vocalised than are the objections of the population living close to the plant. The media and public, she says, need to be vigilant when a debate is being fostered by well-organised interest groups.
For a society that has undergone so much change in such a short space of time, our continued reticence seems unusual.
"Built into the Irish attitude is this greater foreboding about change," adds Daly. "We always seem to be harking back to a golden age. The American view is to look towards the future as the way forward. Lots of Irish history is about looking forward to the past."
Legislation intended to alter our social behaviour often causes the biggest outcry. Maybe it's because we traditionally looked to the Catholic Church rather than the State for guidance or because years under occupation bred a rebellious streak, but the public often has an ambiguous relationship with government.
"It's about a balance, but there is tension there," says Daly. "There might be a particular social problem and the public will make regular calls for the government to do something about it, even if as individuals we could probably take responsibility ourselves. Yet when the government then does, it gets flak."
There may be more flak to come. Much of the Intoxicating Liquor Act, which is aimed at cutting alcohol consumption, comes into effect on Monday, the beginning of a process that may see the liberalisation of the licensing laws.
It is a move expected to draw criticism from those who feel that there are already too many pubs in Ireland.
Elsewhere, the traffic laws remain to be tackled, with one in every four drivers not fully qualified to be on the road. Already, an insurance broker in Castlebar is claiming that the targeting of provisional drivers will "eventually force people off the roads and on to the dole, which will eventually result in increased costs to the taxpayer".
The end is nigh.