Michael Noonan may have anticipated a critical reception to his Budget speech from political opponents, but the literary criticism appearing on Twitter may have caught the Minister for Finance off guard.
Mr Noonan closed his address to the Dáil with a reference to a classic American poem:
“Colleagues will recall that Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken, starts with ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood’.
“The road ahead of us diverges and we have a choice to make. Do we take the road frequently trodden by Irish governments in the past, a road whose signposts are tax and spend and where one’s journey is through boom to bust?
“Or do we, like Frost, take the road ‘less travelled by’? A road whose milestones are prudence and caution. A road that delivers stable economic growth. A road that encourages investment. A road that rewards work, and creates job opportunities. A road that delivers high-quality public services. A road on which our citizens have certainty about their incomes and can plan for the future without fear of another bust. A new road to a new Ireland.
“I know the road this Government will take.”
Mark Brennock, director of public relations at Murray Consultants and a former Irish Times political correspondent, tweeted in response: “Fine Noonan speech, apart from the usual misinterpretation of Frost’s The Road Not Taken #budget15”.
While Frost’s poem has been described as a timeless ode to the American ideals of “individuality” and “forging your own path”, the second stanza of the poem clarifies that both roads are “worn… really about the same”. Frost himself admitted that he was questioining the idea that single decisions would change one’s life.
Frost is said to have written the poem for fellow poet Edward Thomas, who was fighting in France in the first World War.
“I wasn’t thinking about myself there, but about a friend who had gone off to war, a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn’t go the other,” explained Frost.
So in fact, one road is pretty much the same as the other, recalling the scatological answer apocraphylly attributed to Brendan Behan, when asked to distinguish between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
