The Nordic model of economic and social development is of particular relevance to Ireland at this time of financial crisis, according to Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) general secretary David Begg.
He was speaking at a conference in Dublin organised by the think tank Tasc, which also featured contributions from experts from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland.
“Our development model has failed…the Boston or Berlin debate is over,” he said.
Mr Begg said the big problem, “for people of my persuasion”, was that social democracy had “never taken root” in Ireland. “Our Civil War politics took care of that.” He said Ireland was facing its fourth economic crisis since the foundation of the State.
“Comparison with the Nordic model is particularly relevant to Ireland particularly at this stage in its development.” The Nordic countries strove for “quality of condition, rather than the liberal notion of equality of opportunity that we hear so much about”, he said.
However, Mr Begg said he believed Ireland had managed immigration somewhat better than some of the Nordic countries.
He said the emergence of political parties which expressed anti-immigrant sentiment had been “quite disturbing to the body politic” in some countries. “That hasn’t happened here yet,” he added.
Dr Jukka Pekkarinen, director general of the Finnish Ministry for Finance’s economic department, said decision-makers should always listen to divergent voices, “and keep their eyes open for warning signals even during the best of times”.
He drew comparisons between Finland in the 1990s and present-day Ireland. “The bust in housing prices seemed to follow very much the same pattern in both countries,” he said.
Dr Pekkarinen said he remembered the atmosphere in Finland in the late 1980s, when there was a “feeling in the society that the good days would be here forever”.
He warned that economic crises could cast a “long shadow” over political and social life. “In our case they caused huge bitterness in society,” he said. However, “on the positive side”, he said that “badly-hit” banks remembered their lessons for a long time and said Finland now had one of the most solid banking systems in Europe.
Prof Torben M. Anderson, professor of economics at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, said the Nordic countries were affected by the current crisis, “but not severely”.
He said the group of countries faced challenges in the education sector. The belief in Nordic countries was that they had amongst the best education system in the OECD area. That was probably “correct 30 years ago”, Prof Anderson said.
