"It is a tragedy......"

‘It is a tragedy. We have been plagued by bad politicians for many years. They did not care about the public interest, only their own pockets. And then there was the big mistake of going into the eurozone in the first place. After that, successive governments have taken out loans in order to employ more public servants in order to buy votes.”

The above comment is what one Greek citizen said this morning with regard to the fallout from the Greece financial meltdown that has started today but had been simmering for years. If it sounds he could be talking about Ireland then lesson learned; the only difference will be time.

Ireland has being doing business like the Greeks as long as they have. That is corruption on an institutional level and where to be anything but corrupt would seem rather out of place.  The only real difference is that Ireland does it better. Rather than confront, they prostrate on bended and grovelling knee, and that has served it well and suspended indefinitely that sense of outrage since it’s birth as a banana republic. 

There has been no real growth in Ireland in the private sector, and ultimately that is the sector that only matters in the end. It is where any bounce in the economy will be created and any pay rises be really earned. Also, and because of it, a huge gaping hole is left in the numbers that make up our twenty somethings who have left these shores recently, while migration in general from here has been on the increase as well. As many foreign nationals are now leaving as much as Irish ones and most of the former have seen economies in their native countries that would make Ireland’s worst day seem like a walk in the park. Those days are at an end for them and for us.

Ireland is in as much debt as it was in 2008. Changing lenders was all that made it seem better on the balance sheet, yet Ireland borrows billions more every year to keep afloat in just paying the interest on what is already borrowed. As far as Greece is concerned, we are running a close second. 

The soundbites are sounding a lot like each other as well from the politicians as well as from those that elected them. A vicious circle of false hopes and empty promises on both sides. As long as the one side stays asleep, the wolves will continue to prey on the other until nothing is left. And then the wolves will be the first to leave the building and the country for better pickings elsewhere. Many have gone already.

An election is looming and the same drumbeat is beating again and as that Greek man said: 

”....After that, successive governments have taken out loans in order to employ more public servants in order to buy votes.” When an election is bought like that it can and will only end in tears.

When and if Irelands sense of outrage will ever return will be a matter of record. Since the Celts, that record has been one of great passivity and begging. It is as if we can only be led and not lead; and still our own worst enemy that has always shown to be the greatest one that works constantly against us, is the enemy within. 

All we have left since 2008 is more debt, more tribunals, more corruption and no accountability. As long as we remain passive, blinded, tame and docile, then more medicine will be given of the same until we are clinically dead. 

Last time I looked, I thought we already were. 

Barry Clifford