IT WAS a Dublin solicitor during a robust fringe meeting at the Fianna Fail Ard Fheis last weekend who voiced the gravity of the threat confronting the State’s largest and predominant political party which is as real as the struggle for the economic survival of this small island nation.
Addressing a panel of ministers, which included Brian Lenihan, Tánaiste Mary Coughlan and Micheál Martin, Graham Hannon said: “What people are crying out for now is decisive leadership . . . Give us pain now, not death by a thousand cuts.”
Mr Hannon continued: “The people of Ireland voted for Fianna Fáil in 2007 as the best party to get them through the downturn. What you are reading in opinion polls is that they feel their trust was misplaced.”
This insightful comment goes to the heart of the matter: the extravagant boasting of Fianna Fáil-led governments of running the best economy in the world during the Bertie Ahern Celtic Tiger years now appears to have been a national delusion. The talk of our bankers being the smartest lads on the international financial scene is now laid bare for what it was - ‘cute hoorism’.
It is a crude phrase that I don’t particularly like; but unfortunately, it is a true description of the ‘nods and winks’ culture that was endemic not just in the upper echelons of our political and banking systems, and it was all too pervasive an outlook across society summed up in the archetypal ‘Breakfast Roll Man’, who was identified by commentator David McWilliams as the embodiment of the Ahern Era’s lust of selfish greed.
At the political level, Fianna Fáil arrogated this ‘cute hoorism’ to itself and perfected it to such a fine conjuring art in convincing voters almost two years ago that it was only Fianna Fáil who knew how to manage the economy.
Well, the dismal floundering of the Cowen Government in facing up to the current economic crisis has exploded that myth! Proof of this is the four successive opinion polls that have plunged Fianna Fáil’s public ratings down to the mid-20 per cent level and are still diving further downwards.
In a defiant and plucky address to the party faithful, Taoiseach Brian Cowen pledged to take tough and unpopular decisions “regard-less of the short-term political consequences”. Admitting that unemployment will soar to over 400,000, he promised to introduce a package of measures to reform the banking sector, while tackling the public finances gap of 1 8 billion in the day-to-day costs of running the country over five years. He plans to do this through a combination of higher taxes and increased cuts in spending aimed at restoring balance to the public finances by 2013.
This was a sombre note by a determined Taoiseach who professes not to be personally disconsolate at his own - and his party’s - unpopularity. However, a touch of the old arrogance came through in Finance Minister Brian Lenihan’s retort to Mr Hannon’s observation about the impact on Fianna Fáil’s miraculous managerial reputation of the opinion polls. “I will lead and I will not listen to opinion polls”, Lenihan blustered, adding that the Government could not “just join the throng of populist outrage”.
This Lenihan bravado was echoed in vox pop radio sound-bites from individual FF supporters who bragged that their party had been down before but always bounced back to resume its divine destiny of nation-building.
However, the new and potentially critical factor that has emerged in these polls is the big question: is Fianna Fáil looking at a vote collapse comparable to the wipe-out of the Home Rule Party by Sinn Féin in the 1918 general election? Or, is the more appropriate parallel to be found in the fall of the Liberal Party of Gladstone, Asquith and Lloyd George in Britain in the early twentieth century?
Are we witnessing under Brian Cowen the collapse of the party of De Valera, Lemass, Lynch, Haughey and Ahern?
Only time will tell, but all the indicators point to a savaging of Fianna Fáil candidates in the June local and European elections, as well as the two pending by-elections in Dublin.
Time, too, will test the effectiveness of two new super-bodies to be formed by the Government: a new Central Banking Commission based on a Canadian model that will incorporate the responsibilities of the Central Bank and the supervision and regulatory functions of the Financial Regulator; and a Financial Services Consumer Agency combining the existing toothless consumer directorate of the Financial Regulator and the Office of the Financial Services Ombudsman.
On paper, these proposals appear to represent a step in the right direction towards civic probity. Yet, much more radical surgery is required on political governance, according to a report published this Monday by Transparency International. Its report highlights shady influences on political decisionmaking and public policy in Ireland.
In particular, it confirms that international observers view Ireland as being riddled to a considerable degree with high levels of legal corruption through personal relations, patronage and political donations, and that local government, the political parties and the public contracting system are most vulnerable to fraud, corruption and the abuse of power.
Solutions proposed include the creation of a new Garda anti-corruption unit, more resources for agencies tackling fraud, and better legal safeguards for whistleblowers.
As always, however, delivery of solutions reside with the Government and the Oireachtas who have not performed well in their rooting out ‘the cute hoor’ socio-political culture that has enabled banker after banker to proclaim that they did not break any law.
All of this points to some defect in the Irish attitude towards personal and public morality. This deficiency was probed by the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, when he ordered bags of Lenten sack-cloth and ashes for Ireland’s bankers as their penance for their sins of greed. In his Ash Wednesday sermon at University College Dublin, Archbishop Martin lashed out at the “unacceptable” and “immoral behaviour” of financial and business mandarins that have aggravated the economic recession.
The Cowen solution is that “Ireland now needs a Meitheal mentality if we are going to get through this together”. He mixed this grassroots populism with rhetorical republican prose. “So yes, the next three years will be tough,” he said. “But this time will pass. Confidence will return. The world will recover. And Ireland will rise again”.
A pre-essential of this recovery must be the purging of ‘cute-hoorism’ and the reconstruction of a political system that addresses corruption, lack of accountability and social inequity. It will be Brian Cowen’s response in squaring up to these challenges that will determine his fate, as well as Fianna Fáil’s fate, at a time of unprecedented economic crisis. In his concluding passage to the Ard Fheis, he vowed that he will do everything he can to manage us through this crisis.
Cowen’s supreme test in leading “the fight for the future” will be to demonstrate the lead-ership qualities which he believes are enshrined in Fianna Fáil, but which have been called into question by foot-soldier Graham Hannon - and mirrored in the flood of recent opinion polls.
