There's no fickle hand of fate behind our watery travails, but the hand of short-sighted politicians and developers, writes ORNA MULCAHY
THERE’S A notion going around that Ireland deserves all the misery it’s getting. That the floods are nothing to do with poor planning, and that roofs are flying off buildings to teach us yet another lesson.
“It’s karma,” said an otherwise sensible businessman, surveying the lowering sky as though he expected a hand to come out of it and point at him and say: “You there, you lived high on the hog with your electronic gates and golf holidays in Portugal but that’s all over now. Thought you could get away with it? Wait till you see what I have in store for you next!”
Passively, fatalistically even this week, we watched the residents of Cork, and Gort and Claregalway and Athlone wade past floating cars and houses up to their fanlights in floodwater, thinking, God, that’s terrible!
Friends and neighbours rushed to their aid and various politicians sloshed around the worst-hit areas.
The Taoiseach rowed in, so to speak, telling us that things are going to get worse before they get better; and that’s supposed to be reassuring? Really Taoiseach, it is just not good enough.
It’s time to start throwing shoes, or more appropriately Wellington boots at this Government, but instead people say “we’ll get you on election day”. The year after next. Honestly, did we lose our spines along with our shirts in the crash? We’re about as angry as wet hens.
It’s not the hand of God that’s doing this. It’s the various hands of our own inept, short-sighted planners and politicians in league with get-rich-quick developers who where once lauded as visionaries and entrepreneurs and who have now slipped so far below the radar you could say they’re in hiding.
Not forgetting the bankers. There at least the Government is determined to be seen to be doing something, what with yesterday’s news that State-owned Anglo Irish Bank is suing former chief executive David Drumm for his €8 million loan.
This is right and proper and also very convenient in the week that was in it. A sop to the public to take their minds off their sopping wet compatriots.
Drumm, like many another involved in the national mess, has slipped quietly off stage, but not before arranging to have his Dublin home put in his wife’s name. Nothing unusual there. In the property community it’s widely acknowledged that well-known developers, and those associated with them, have been moving assets into spouses’ names and into family trusts in the run-up to Nama, without any intervention from banks or from the Government.
However, with Anglo a touchstone for national ire, you can expect more of its outlandish loans to be publicly recalled in the run-up to the budget.
Meanwhile, our crash course in home economics continues. What a steep learning curve! Who would have imagined even a year ago that Tesco would be planning to put security tags on its turkeys to stop them being robbed for Christmas; or that people would be cutting back on using gas and electricity to make ends meet? That’s according to findings in this week’s Irish Times/Behaviour and Attitudes poll, which asked over 1,000 people what they’ve learned over the last 12 months. The majority regret not having lived within their means. A high percentage of those polled took personal blame with a total of 56 per cent wishing they had spent less or saved more.
Okay. Lesson learned. Does that mean that when the good times roll again, as they inevitably will, there will be a lot of wise ones – possibly very elderly wise ones – warning the young to save for a rainy day?
Just like a certain generation did in recent years. I’m thinking of older parents I know who were aghast at the lavish spending that went on in their own families – the constant eating out in expensive restaurants and hotels, the weekend breaks and the ridiculous visits to Lapland coming up to Christmas. I’m thinking of the grandmother, who with, say, a couple of lipsticks and a pot of Olay to her name, couldn’t believe the daughter-in-law’s sack of make-up and full head of highlights.
According to the survey, older people aged 65 plus were mostly likely to say that they hadn’t learned anything from the recession – perhaps a sign that they had seen it all before.
The trouble is that people don’t like listening to their elders, until things start to go wrong. For economies to go into overdrive requires the ignoring of age-old advice.
A certain amount of amnesia is require for a boom to work. This downturn may result in a generation that is determined not to make the same mistakes again, but then just behind them will be a fresh generation ready to take the risk and the rewards of whatever bubble comes next.
In vain will their parents tell them to keep their money safe, and not throw it at schemes promising double-digit returns. They will just laugh and call us old-fashioned, and say, but that was the olden days. This is different.