ON FRIDAY night four of the country’s most prominent polemicists appeared on the Late Late Show with Ryan Tubridy to discuss the NAMA controversy and the spiralling demise of the economy.
The four - Kevin Myers, Matt Cooper, Sarah Carey and Gerard Colleran - were apoplectic with rage, at the bankers, the Government and developers. Each had their own particular opinion, but all agreed that the country is in dire straits, and us, our children and grandchildren will end up paying for the reckless way in which Fianna Fail ran the country, and the way in which bankers lent money to profligate developers.
Some weeks previously on Pat Kenny’s Frontline programme on RTE, the entrepreneur and Apprentice supremo Bill Cullen told the gathered audience of 20- and early 30-something-year-olds they were all “whingers” when they complained about the catastrophic collapse of the Irish economy, brought about at least in part by the current government’s incompetence, and woeful decisions of the previous Ahern era administrations.
Those on the show complained about their lack of well-paid jobs, the lack of any chance to get professional experience and the fact that most were facing emigration. Those a little older were in the main saddled with massive mortgage debt, and faced a generation of negative equity on homes that were worth less than half their owners paid for them, and would in all likelihood never again regain the enormous prices their owners paid for them.
Cullen was booed for airing his comments. But what if he was right?
On a daily basis on the Joe Duffy Show is inundated with tales of woe from ordinary people who took out mortgages and are now facing repossession, or young graduates who cannot find work and are emigrating.
This week the Star ran an emotive headline “They Should Be Shot” with accompanying picture of bankers including former Anglo chairman Sean Fitzpatrick following the announcement by the Finance Minster Brian Lenihan in the Dail that billions more are going to have to be injected into Anglo, along with the other Irish banks, to save the banking sector, and the country, from collapse.
Now, let get this out the way: the bankers are to blame for the economic tsunami that hit the country, and so is Fianna Fail. Brian Cowen and most of the current cabinet have been in government for 13 years. Economic policies they pursued lead directly to he property boom and the economic and deserved to be hounded out of office at the next election. There have been five French republics and a couple ended with the beheading of its leaders. It is time to do the same here.
But it struck me that not one of the young contributors to the Frontline show took any responsibility for the current state of the country. Are we not all citizens? Did we not elect the Government? The public, especially ‘Low GI Jane’ and ‘Breakfast Roll Man’ (to use the phrases coined by economist David McWilliams) voted en masse for Bertie Ahern and the continuation of the Fianna Fail lead government in the 2007 elections – all of the commuter belt constituencies returned a strong representation of Fianna Fail candidates. We all bought into the credit driven consumerism bonanza. So is it not just as much our fault?
But to start blaming the 20 and 30-somethings of ‘Generation Now’ as Carl O’Brien in the Irish Times has labeled our generation is not going to get us anywhere. What we need is action and leadership to start to build a new economy, and a new republic.
A new generation of leaders needs to emerge. Trust in politicians of all parties is completely lost and we are in danger of losing a generation of highly educated and motivated young Irish graduates unless that new republic is born soon.
Michael Collins was 31 when he was shot in Beal na mBlath in August 1922. Robert Emmett was 26 when he was hanged, drawn and quartered on Thomas St for treason. They dreamed, perhaps naively and idealistically, of a new Ireland.
We all need to do the same, and take responsibility for coming up with solutions to the economic and political paralysis that has firmly taken hold in the country. We have to conceive and give birth to this new republic. If we don’t, then this generation is lost.
-TF
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