Let's, just for once, raise a new-year glass to the luck of the Irish. It's a dreadful phrase and whoever thought it up should be strangled with his own smugness. Samuel Beckett obliquely commented on it by naming the miserable slave in Waiting for Godot Lucky. There's the time-encrusted yarn of the Irish ad for a lost dog: "Three legs, mange, mangled ear, lost one eye, twisted tail, answers to the name Lucky."
Of course we’re lucky in living in the rich part of the world, with a temperate climate, no volcanoes or earthquakes, and no guinea worms or tsetse flies. And of course there’s a ludicrous Irish self-pity summed up in Liam Kennedy’s brilliant acronym Mope (Most Oppressed People Ever). Still, any island whose population remains substantially lower than it was in 1840 can’t really be called lucky. Which may be why we don’t really know what to do with luck.
Twice lucky
In the history of the State, we’ve been collectively lucky exactly twice. The first time was roughly between 1995 and 2001, when the stars in the firmament of history seemed to be aligning almost magically. It wasn’t pure luck, of course: long-term investment in education, the positive effects of women’s liberation, social partnership in its sensible phase, the peace process and improvements in infrastructure all contributed to the boom that transformed the Irish economy in those years. Where we got lucky was that all of these things just happened to coincide with the greatest-ever expansion of global trade, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the opening up of
China
and the turbocharged takeoff of information technology. All of our vicious circles suddenly became virtuous.
And we blew it. We didn’t know our own luck. Our ruling class mistook luck for entitlement. They thought that there was some kind of historic karma at work, that Irish developers flying around in “His” and “Hers” helicopters was payback for the Great Hunger. Having the best-paid government leaders since the Emperor Palpatine was justice for the Penal Laws.
The idea that we should use the opportunity of a stroke of fortune to build a decent, modest, inclusive and sustainable prosperity was drowned in the wave of self-congratulation. Ironically, having forgotten the role of luck in the creation of the Celtic Tiger, much of the ruling class believed (and, deep down, still believes) that it was just bad luck that killed it.
The second time the State got lucky is right now. The Government will claim, of course, that Enda Kenny charmed Opec into lowering oil prices, that Michael Noonan bluffed the European Central Bank (ECB) into cutting interest rates to almost zero, that Eamon Gilmore schmoozed Barack Obama into stimulating the US economy instead of giving in to the hysterical clamour for austerity, and that Joan Burton has been manipulating exchange rates from her secret beehive bunker on Skellig Michael.
But all of the things that have rescued the Irish economy from disaster are strokes of fortune: cheap oil, cheap money, the ECB’s belated reversal of policy, the strength of the US and British economies and the weakness of the euro. Luck, by definition, is about the things you can’t control and, for us, those things have turned out spectacularly well.
So do we know our own luck this time? It’s important that, unlike 15 years ago, we recognise luck when we see it. This isn’t just a political game about whether the Government gets electoral credit for miraculously saving us all. It’s about accurately interpreting what’s happened.
Vast amounts of money
We haven’t recovered because we dumped vast amounts of money into dead banks or obeyed illegal instructions not to burn unsecured bondholders, or because we cut home help for elderly people or doubled child poverty or abandoned the promised “democratic revolution”. We’ve recovered because things entirely beyond our control have worked out brilliantly for us. The lesson is not that if you inflict cruel and stupid punishment on the most vulnerable people in your society, your economy will prosper. The only real lesson is that it’s a really good idea to get lucky.
So do we know what to do now? Luck is a mode of transport – smart people and smart societies ride it to get them from a bad place to a good one. Last time around, we rode our luck like competitors in one of those mad Olympic dressage events, preening and prancing and pirouetting with exquisite self-regard but with little notion of actually going anywhere. Let’s not do that this time around.
Dame Fortune has very kindly given us a second chance. It's a chance to build not more fantasy dream homes, but a republic that doesn't need to be lucky all the time because it has solid foundations of social, economic and environmental sustainability. We have to start with an adult conversation about ending inequalities, giving all of our children a good start and providing citizens with the basic things they need in order to lead productive and dignified lives. Good luck with that, I hear you mutter, but wouldn't it be nice if we could make that toast without irony?