No doubt we are all supposed to utter hoarse cheers of joy that the IDA has talked yet another American company into setting up here - this time in lovely, unspoilt Cavan. Soon lovely, unspoilt Cavan will be lovely, enbungalowed Cavan, every field a housing site, every junction a traffic jam, every village a dormitory, every pub a designer-chic drinks emporium, serving wheat beers, latte and bottled lager at £5 a go.
Is this the future we are creating for ourselves: a commercial paradise, with not a corner of Ireland free of the fierce energies of industry, and road rage at every turn? Perhaps the IDA is awash with other bright schemes as well - computer plants from coast to coast, so that you can pass from Dingle to Dundalk and never be out of sight of new technology. Perfectly blissful.
Public service
We are importing factories even though there is no workforce to work in them, and so the only solution will be to import people as well. Is there a logic here? Is there a scheme? Or are we charging down the road towards madness? Who can blame the public service for getting greedy when greed seems predominant, and when it seems to be rewarded?
Those employed one way or another by the State, are in a condition of rising insurrection. Teachers have had conversations galore with themselves - heaven knows, they have enough time to - and believe they have A Case. Locomotive drivers, the same. The Garda Siochana might be thinking the same, but they also probably realise it's a little early to have an uprising so soon after they were last bribed into submission. Nurses the same.
A few friends ate in La Stampa in Dublin the other night. The front-of-house manager was efficient and friendly, and the service generally good; I say that now, because credit to where it belongs. But otherwise La Stampa seemed to epitomise how and where we are going hideously wrong.
It was booming, every table full and the waiting area teeming with putative diners. Why? The food is not good; in fact it is poor. Which would be fine if the prices reflected the quality; but they are very high prices, without very high quality. What you pay for is costly mediocrity.
Brace yourselves. Fish and chips, £17 a go. This culinary larceny consisted of two pieces of fish and six chips. I say again, six chips, insolently stacked across one another like logs. If the fish cost £11 - and it was just plain white fish, cod I presume - one may conclude that the chips cost a pound each. The roast lamb, at £22, seemed reasonable. Needless to say, vegetables were extra.
Estate agents
Now this sort of cretinousness is only possible if it has become a norm; if this is what diners expect and put up with elsewhere. Excellence is surrendered in a bizarre contest in which a restaurant is judged not by the quality of its food but by its prices, the buzz, the chicness of the clientele. I remember encountering this before - in London, 1987, just before the collapse.
Other symptoms too. In London 13 years ago, you had estates agents' shops everywhere, just like Dublin today. And London had day-long traffic jams on Sundays. How we guffawed. Last Sunday, there was a day-long traffic jam in Dublin - and not just near Lansdowne Road, but across the city, and we did not gufffaw. Noon, and the Liffey quays were a car-park; five hours later, and it took over an hour to get from Ballsbridge to Rathgar, and once we had left the immediate area of the rugby match, we saw not a single garda.
Absence of police about their duty was one of the symptoms of London before the great collapse. Traffic paralysed at every junction, with Plod back in the station with his feet up, tucking into tea and biscuits. Where are the gardai these days when traffic blocks up an intersection? How is it possible that weekend after weekend, major events occur in and around Dublin, without special traffic measures being enforced throughout the city to cope with the consequences? How it is possible, for example, that after any major GAA match, traffic control at the M50/Naas dual-carriageway intersection is left to the utterly counterproductive rhythms of traffic lights, which show green to a relatively empty inward carriageway, and red to the thousands of homeward-bound vehicles?
Prosperity
Why is this important? Because it is a form of strike by the public service. The accord within society, unwritten but understood, is based on a mutuality of interest. This mutuality of interest is being torn apart by the stresses of prosperity rising individually at almost uncontrollable levels, while vast amounts of young people, especially in the public service, are unable to find anywhere to live at rents they can afford.
No, I don't think there'll be a slump. Particular circumstances brought about the catastrophic collapse in London. But forces are being unleashed in Irish life which seem to be beyond our control, and we cannot know the consequences. We might start by defining policy a little - just because an area hasn't got a computer factory doesn't automatically mean it should get one. In other words, perhaps we might send the Ranger Wing into the IDA and use its job-procurement section for target practice.
Or maybe they'll save us the ammo, and close up shop. Please?