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It’s incredible how much a “good vibe” can hide.
As Ireland begins its presidency, talk is turning back to the previous presidencies of Bertie and Haughey (although the national austerity humiliation of the 2013 presidency has been thoroughly suppressed like a traumatic memory). A patina of nostalgia is already covering them, and the flaws and shortcomings of those times – corruption, blindly pumping a cheap credit-fuelled economic bubble, political cronyism, and so on – are being conveniently forgotten.
It was partly good luck that both presidencies landed at two key moments for the EU: the former during the 2004 accession of Eastern Europe and the latter following the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was good luck more generally that both landed amid the economic growth and political stability that followed the Cold War. Good times cover a multitude of sins.
Back then the great wave of prosperity and the great European hope were able to paper over these concerns. Even the austerity years redirected much of the attention to “them bloody bankers”. But with people’s pockets still hurting, and a general stagnation and sclerosis only dragging on, the big pageantry of this EU presidency seems bound to only draw contempt.
So Martin parades Brussels dignitaries around the “great EU success story”, which they in turn will hold up to the continent like a baby Simba to the Lion King’s Serengeti subjects. Already António Costa has bestowed on us the honour of being at the “forefront of upholding [the] rules-based order”.
Meanwhile, beneath the surface, the government, the state, and the nation are increasingly patched together with plasters and Blu Tack.
For one, the once-dominant government parties are polling at all-time lows. In the Dáil their coalition clings to power with a thin majority propped up by a handful of somewhat mercurial independents. The result is a fractious Dáil where old norms are breaking down.
We saw a speaking rights dispute delay the Dáil for three months. We saw fuel protests that brought the country to a standstill, were broadly supported by the public, yet were met with army deployment. We saw a presidential election that produced the highest deliberate spoiled vote in the history of any Western democracy, after the government parties blocked independent candidates and pushed unpopular ones – even against the will of their own members in Fianna Fáil’s case. And then we saw said party struggle to scrape 10% in two by-elections, in constituencies where it once romped home with half the vote.
All this only further erodes public trust. This is the unstable platform from which Ireland now projects itself as a “model EU member”.
Underneath the branding, three interlocking crises dominate: housing, migration, and cost of living. The housing emergency needs no introduction. Mass migration has compounded that shortage, while IPAS accommodation contracts deliver handsome profits to some operators. Energy prices remain among the highest in Europe. Domestic exploration is effectively banned, Corrib is winding down, and renewables deliver ultimately unreliable, intermittent power.
The middle class is squeezed while welfare traps make working less attractive than staying on the dole in some cases. Meanwhile, public spending veers between waste (the infamous bike shed) and opacity, where we have received independent warnings that our procurement sector has developed cartels. We throw taxpayers’ cash like there’s no tomorrow at a sprawling NGO and quango sector, itself a revolving door for many in the political elite.
And just for good measure, alongside the migration crisis, we’ve somehow managed to squeeze in a simultaneous emigration crisis, particularly affecting our best and brightest. Because why not? As the crises pile up, let’s drive out anyone capable of solving them.
I think any sane government faced with all of this would be leveraging it to request aid and derogations from the EU, not showing off with triple the budget of the last two presidencies.
But instead we see glossy brochures, motorcades, grand resorts hosting lavish dinners while being locked down by large security details, heavily outsourced to the French (the result of yet another crisis, the chronic underfunding of our defence forces). Presentations will show foreign visitors deliberately inflated GDP figures, while regular citizens feel the sting at the supermarket till. It’s leprechaun economics and leprechaun public relations.
The whole thing is eerily reminiscent of the Soviet Union, where foreign visitors and dignitaries were shepherded on carefully curated tours of the infamous “Potemkin” model villages and factories, themselves only facades populated with actors. At least in the USSR’s case we can imagine that a few scared, starving actors, fake houses, and factory facades must have been relatively inexpensive.
It is also reminiscent of the USSR, in that regimes in decline tend to go all out on pageantry: when you can’t solve problems, you throw a parade!
But a state held together by Blu Tack and wishful branding can only stage-manage reality for so long. Sooner or later, the wind blows through the cardboard facades, and everyone sees what’s really behind them.
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Tadhg Pidgeon
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