INSIDE POLITICS:A look back at recent decades suggests we all must work with the Government to get out of the mess we are in, writes Stephen Collins
THE GOVERNMENT's sorry plight, after a truly dreadful week, has obviously come as manna from heaven for the Opposition, but there is not much consolation in it for anybody else. The country is sliding over a financial and economic precipice and those in charge have lost the authority to do what is necessary to avert disaster.
The most striking thing about the public reaction to the Budget, as reflected in the response of vested interests and the media, is there seems to be no appreciation of the precarious position of the country.
Back in 1981, when things were quite similar, with vested interests groups resisting all attempts to get the country's finances in order, the late Fine Gael TD John Kelly compared the Irish State to a sow "lying, panting, exhausted by her own weight and being rent by a farrow of cannibal piglets". The result of that unwillingness to put the common good ahead of personal or sectoral interest was a dreadful economic decade, with unemployment and emigration on a vast scale and political instability that resulted in five general elections in eight years.
All the signs now are that the country is heading in the same direction, politically and economically, with the only difference being it might even be worse, given the scale of the crisis in public finances and banking.
One of the many parallels between the position then and now is that a Fianna Fáil government attempted and failed to get the public to see economic reality. It had raised expectations out of all proportion to reality with the election give-away in 1977. When minister for finance George Colley tried the following year to claw back some of the concessions by taxing child benefit, he brought down a hail of abuse and had to climb down in the face of protest from people he termed "well-heeled, articulate women".
As borrowing spiralled out of control in the years that followed, Charles Haughey identified the problem in his famous "we are living away beyond our means" television address to the nation but failed to take the required action for fear of losing his first election. After that, Garret FitzGerald's Fine Gael-Labour government struggled to get the economy under control. Then came the hairshirt measures of Ray MacSharry in 1987, supported by Fine Gael. They finally did the trick.
What is so depressing about the current situation is the lessons of that decade appear to have been completely lost on the electorate. It seems we are destined to follow Rudyard Kipling's famous injunction (from his poem The Gods of the Copybook Headings) about the only certainties of behaviour throughout history: "That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire/ And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire."
The current situation is reminiscent of the early 1980s. For a start, we have a Government that was insisting up to very recently that the good times could continue to roll indefinitely. It was not just that they promised too much in the election, because all the other parties did the same - the real problem was that they continued to insist for almost a year after that nothing had changed.
Collapsing tax revenues and the perilous state of the banks finally brought home reality to our rulers but, unfortunately, the ruled haven't got the message and are showing no signs of being in any mood to face reality.
The political implications of this are profound. A supplementary budget will almost certainly be required some time next year and probably before the summer. After the pasting it took over the past two weeks, how will the Government have the nerve to frame the kind of budget the country needs but doesn't want to accept? One bit of gallows humour doing the rounds among Fianna Fáil TDs suggests that it was as well the Cabinet brought forward the Budget to October because it will need to introduce another one on the normal date in December.
At the heart of the matter is the fact that the Government doesn't have a mandate to do the kind of things that the current state of public finances require. That is bound to lead to further political instability with the worst possible scenario being that it will limp on, attempting, but failing, to do what is needed.
Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore was correct to suggest yesterday there is no certainty any longer the Government will survive the political and public pressure. The panic on the Fianna Fáil backbenches seems to be spreading to the Greens and getting a supplementary budget through the Dáil next year now looks problematic.
It may well take a general election with a proper debate on the real options facing the country to clear the air and get the voters to see the necessity of tough measures. At the moment that looks like a nightmare scenario for Fianna Fáil but it need not be.
One of the lessons of the political instability of the early 1980s was that a significant segment of the electorate is willing to face the facts if they are put squarely before them. The defeat of the Fine Gael-Labour government on John Bruton's budget of January 1982 has gone down in political folklore. But what is often forgotten is that Fine Gael increased its vote in the election that resulted from that Dáil defeat. Fiscal rectitude became the big issue and remained so through the decade.
The other big lesson of the 1980s is that once a political consensus emerged between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in 1987 about how to deal with the crisis, it was soon solved.
Unfortunately the fact that it took so long to get that consensus meant that the cuts in public spending, particularly in health, were much more savage than might have been required if the situation had been dealt with earlier.
There are no conceivable circumstances in which Fine Gael will again offer to support a Fianna Fáil government from the outside.
In the aftermath of an election at a time of crisis in the economy, though, the old enemies might finally bury the hatchet and go into Government with each other. It looks like the only way another wasted decade of economic disaster and futile political competition can be avoided.