HEART BEAT:Cowen's speech was of 'the dog ate my homework' variety
JUST WHEN you think things couldn’t get any worse, they do. I listened to extracts from Brian Cowen’s supposedly exculpatory speech at Dublin City University. It was of “the dog ate my homework” variety. It seemed to presuppose that the audience, immediate and general, were imbeciles. Many people over many years, myself included, predicted that damnation was just around the corner. Cowen sounded like the backsliding Scot, who found himself in a very hot place after death, and raised his eyes from the mire to the heights above: “I dinnae ken Lord”, to which a harsh celestial voice replied, “Aye, well ye ken the noo”.
You and your ilk have been there for 13 years. We are now in the land of your making. True, that in banking and development you had worthy accomplices, but the buck stops with you and your predecessor, both as ministers for finance and taoisigh. The pair of you could join the Roman poet Ovid in his plaint:
" Omnia iam fient fieri quae posse negabam" or "All the things which I denied could happen, are now happening". It wasn't Fine Gael, Labour or Sinn Féin who caused these problems, it was yourselves in Fianna Fáil and your patsies in the PDs and now the Greens who created and maintain our woes.
" Be not made a beggar by banqueting upon borrowing, when thou hast nothing in thy purse . . ." – Ecclesiasticus (18:33).
I thought we were broke and owed billions to anonymous folk, so how is it that we can afford to make gigantic loans to people more profligate and indebted than ourselves? I know about charity and giving your last coin to somebody worse off than yourself. I was taught that at school, though at the time I had some difficulty with the concept. Rewards in the next life seemed a bit nebulous. However, in this case we’re apparently giving somebody else’s coin to the impoverished Greeks. Does not this make us some sort of improvident middlemen? I know the proffered explanation is that we’ll make money on the deal because we’ll borrow at a lower rate than the Greeks will repay us. Ah, yes, there are the usual two chances of that; the same sort of chances that we’ll make money from Nama.
When we raise questions like this we are bombarded with verbosity about “haircuts”and “conditionality”.
Now we are told that the EU may want to look at our budgets in the preparatory stage, presumably to make sure that we are being good and doing what we are told. The Opposition voices questions about this and are told that, by so doing, they are risking our future. It is intimated that a byelection, let alone a general election might send all the wrong signals to the financial world.
This “financial world” is only happy, seemingly, when those who caused our disaster are happily screwing those of our citizens who are blameless. This situation is described as the “strong measures necessary to restore the situation”. What does that mean, the good old days of the Galway tent perhaps?
Now somebody is going to look over our homework before we hand it in and before the dog gets a chance to eat it. This brings in the word, sovereignty. The coin of our economy, indeed our integrity, may be tarnished in the eyes of some of our European partners, but it is our coin, and we’ll burnish it again ourselves. We do not need to be a vassal or dependent state. Indeed, it is to be noted that this budgetary supervision was to apply only to states that embraced the euro as currency. Our neighbours across the water would have told them sharply what to do with the proposal. I note that the French are doing just that.
Mr Cowen told us the half-truth that he had abolished the tax breaks that had fuelled our Gadarene rush to perdition. He only abolished new applications. Those in situ were allowed to completion. He did not abolish tax breaks for private hospitals and these are springing up like fungi, while our once-proud public system falls into willed decay. There is no sense and no propriety to what is being mindlessly inflicted on our people. It is time to go Taoiseach, and bring your minions with you.
Your speech unfortunately gave substance to " Multi famam, conscientiam pauci verentur" or "Many fear their reputation, few their conscience" – Pliny the Younger.
mneligan@irishtimes.com