I went to see David O’Doherty in the Melbourne Comedy festival the other night because for all the faults of the country, Ireland still produces the best comedians in the world. He finished his routine with a story about a recent interview he did on Irish radio. He was asked what his view of the financial crisis was and what Ireland should do about the interest payments due to the European Central Bank.
His first thought was that things have fallen pretty badly in Ireland when comedians are being asked for their opinion on economic matters. But then again, economists haven’t been very clever in this area either. I read a lot of stuff on the web about the home country and it strikes me that if you put two Irish economists in a room, you would get at least 3 opinions.
David’s suggestion was that when the European bankers come looking for their cash, everyone in Dublin should start speaking Irish and pretend they can’t understand a word the Europeans are saying. It might sound silly, but it’s not as dumb as mortgaging the welfare of future generations to pay for the greed of bankers.
He also suggested that Ireland should hide all the helicopters, smootie makers and barista machines while the European Central Bank are in town. All the material possessions built up during the Celtic Tiger years are still there you know, even if some of them are starting to look scruffy around the edges.
It did make me think however, about my favourite Celtic Tiger moment. While I mock things back home, I have to admit that I was also part of it. I paid 12 euros for a focaccia loaf at a farmer’s market and threw most of it away after the first sandwich. I flew to Belgium once to see a band that was playing in Dublin the following week but on a night that clashed with a Soprano’s episode on TV. And I once bought my five year old niece a digital camera for Christmas that was smashed before the turkey was finished.
But I was a lightweight compared to a lot of people in Ireland. I only ever owned one house at a time and that was the one I lived in and I shunned the stock market. I was considered a fool by most people who saw the purpose of life as being the accumulation of as much material wealth as possible.
When I bought my first house, the tiger was just a cub, but a hungry one nonetheless. It was a new development and I got a call one day to ask me what electrical fittings I would like. It was 20 euro a socket and about 50 for a light fitting. I really only cared about where I could plug the telly in, so I had to depend on advice from the electrician who was showing me round.
I thought he’d try to convince me to install enough fittings to light up an aircraft carrier, as every addition was extra money in his pocket. But he was bored with the process and explained that he had four hundred houses to cover on my estate alone. And he had six other new estates to work on after that. He was making so much money during the building boom that he could afford to yawn as he accepted my cheque and climbed into his Mercedes.
A week or so later I got a call from the developer’s office, asking why I hadn’t paid the final instalment on the property. I tried to explain that the house wasn’t finished as it lacked some basic stuff like a roof. She practically screamed at me down the phone that there were fifty people on a waiting list who would happily take my house if I don’t stump up the cash immediately and the sad thing is, she was probably correct. At the time, garden sheds were selling for a fortune in Dublin.
It was a bubble of course and while anyone who wanted to could see that, it was rude to mention it in polite company. Everyone in Ireland took on the posture of those three monkeys who could hear no evil, see no evil nor speak no evil.
Besides, there was an element of enjoying the ride while we could. People started going to New York to do Christmas shopping. Bagel shops started opening all over the country, despite the fact that we were raised on sliced white bread. You still couldn’t get a decent curry or pasta, but that didn’t stop restaurants charging twice as much as you’d pay in London.
First Holy Communion was where you really saw the excess. Parental peer pressure is the hardest thing to fight. People started hiring helicopters to bring their seven year daughter to the church. They rented bouncy castles that were too big for their back garden and dressed their children in designer fashion straight from the cat walks of Milan.
Most of the madness however, was in the housing sector. People started buying numerous houses to rent out to Polish immigrants or to spend two weeks a year in on the West Coast. After the crash happened, I heard one woman on Irish radio complaining that due to salary cuts in the public service she could no longer afford the repayments on her Romanian holiday home. She cried as though her first born child had been snatched from her.
When it all went wrong, I have to confess to an element of smugness and a feeling of “I told you so”. Part of me hoped that the electrician I dealt with when I bought my house had invested all his money in Romanian apartments and was now sitting with a paper cup on O’Connell Bridge.
But I hope not. It’s time to make a new Ireland that concentrates on its good things, like its sense of humour and social life and to dispense with fumbling in a greasy till. Making David O’Doherty the Minister of Finance might be a good start.
No comments:
Post a Comment