How is it possible that, barring the lone voice of Anthony Coughlan, we sleepwalked into membership of the euro? Soon the euro will be about as valuable as a 1973 zloty or a 1921 German mark, and our economy is going to be buffeted, if not pushed into deep recession, by a storm not of our making. The economic failures which are causing the euro to behave like an anvil in thin air are not our failures; and the financial adjustments that will follow to correct the damage to this bizarrely worthless currency will punish us in order to satisfy largely German concerns.
So we are living in a German empire, in which German economic requirements take precedence over ours. The very people Charlie McCreevy was anachronistically calling "pinkos" are in charge of the most delinquently run countries in Europe, where the demands of the welfare state take precedence over the economic base which keeps it going. Morality has taken the place of supply and demand as the engine of the economy. Treasuries have been ransacked according to the principle of what governments should do rather than what they can do.
Welfare state
And of course in the weird and wonderful world of roseate politics, governments should do everything. In France, the welfare state has turned the country into an open-air lunatic asylum. Not merely are all children treated free of charge but receive monthly home visits by doctors, whether or not a child needs it, with a wanton distribution of drugs, homeopathic or otherwise, for shoving up their bottoms - which is, apparently, the French way.
The problem is the same right across euroland: vast and flabby welfare states, doubledigit unemployment, high taxes combined with low work-incentives, and a vast crisis in pension funds manoeuvring on the horizon like an invasion fleet. This is what we have tethered ourselves to: and the rights and wrongs of that decision pale into insignificance beside our astonishing inability or refusal to discuss the problems ahead before we enlisted on this stricken vessel, SS euro.
It would have been possible to have taken the British waitand-see-option; but, of course, that would have offended our sense of unBritishness, that curious quality which co-exists with a desire to imitate so much of what goes on in British life. Our unBritishness demanded that we prove ourselves more unquestionably and piously pro-euro than the British. Perhaps it was this very instinct towards unBritishness which stifled debate. We were good Europeans. The British were bad europeans. End of story.
But of course it wasn't the end of the story. Political delinquency and economic inertia - common bedfollows - have meant that the structural reforms which everyone assumed would occur in euroland never happened. But they have been happening in Ireland, as they have throughout the common-law, anglophone world. The Irish, the British, the US, the Canadians, the New Zealanders, have cut taxes, personal and corporate, and withdrawn the tentacles of state incompetence from their respective economies.
Unbroken growth
The result has been unprecedented and largely unbroken growth, even as the economies underpinning the euro adventure have circled around in baffled sloth.
So the euro, that still mythical currency to which we have attached ourselves as providently as we might to a unicorn, has plummeted catastrophically in the past 16 months. It has fallen even against such mighty currencies as the mighty won of North Korea, whose economy is strikingly similar to that of Bikini Atoll, and the peso of Cuba, a country which is so incompetently run that soon it will be importing Havanas.
The British were not alone in not joining the euro. The Swedes did not, nor did the Greeks, and nor did the Danes, who have a currency that is a thousand years old and who will be voting on whether or not to join the euro this autumn. Unlike us, they are having and will continue to have a serious debate on the issue. But come September, guess which way they'll vote? They'll stay out.
We can't stay out; but maybe we can get out before the other high-unemployment, high-inflation economies of Eastern Europe scramble onto SS euro, turning it into a winos' club, barely floating and drifting towards the iron-shores of insolvency. Is there an option for us to get out? Can we not merely negotiate our way out of Maastricht, but renegotiate our relations with the low-taxation, low-inflation, low-unemployment maritime economies of the Atlantic rim?
Myself, I haven't a clue. But this sort of nonsense can't continue, with an ailing currency being dragged all over the place by the social and economic myopia of political cultures over which we have no control. And maybe the answer isn't a maritime trade pact, but a toughened European one.
Acquiescence
But what is most troubling is that one hears virtually no voices in the Oireachteas speaking these concerns aloud. We have a political culture of debate-free acquiescence. Whereas once we surrendered authority to Rome, now we surrender it to a hive-minded political class, which decided almost as one that the euro was a Good Thing and an independent currency was not.
It is, to be sure, easier for the British and the Danes to feel an emotional attachment to their ancient currencies, which reach back over a millennium as either an accounting concept (the pound) or a coin (the krone). For such peoples currency is a national symbol: its terminology, and its metaphors infuse their language, their culture, their identity in a way which is not true for us. But this does not absolve us from discussing our relationship with the euro.
The eleventh hour has passed. The chimes of midnight draw near. After the twelfth peal it will be too late.