The article discusses Ireland's current situation where it has a significant surplus of €25 billion but lacks a clear vision on how to spend it. This financial abundance contrasts with an ideological deficit, highlighted by the absence of a cohesive national identity and direction.
We have a windfall – but the golden apples seem to have fallen on our heads. Our governing culture has lost its great get-out clause: ‘If only we had the money…'
By then, the State’s ideological model had served its time. It was once a very strong alloy, composed in equal parts of nationalism and Catholicism. These elements were mined from the depths of Irish history and forged through centuries of oppression, humiliation and resistance.Sally Rooney gets photographed with an owl, looking unimpressed.
But a lot of the energy behind this shift was negative. It was fuelled by repulsion. The authority of the institutional church and Fianna Fáil’s hegemony both paid the price of unaccountable power. They corrupted themselves. I don’t for a moment want to compare the repression that people suffered in Ireland with what was endured under Soviet domination in central and eastern Europe. But there is one valid point of similarity – in both cases, a totalising ideology collapsed under the weight of its own corruptions, contradictions and absurdities. And in both, this implosion created a vacuum.
And then what? Two ideological structures had collapsed in short order – Catholic nationalism and hedonistic capitalism. What came next is a delightful Irish twist on technocracy and pragmatism – technocracy that is short on technical competence and pragmatism that is not very practical. It does this because it has no narrative. It has run through various stories about itself: the island paradise that would follow independence, the martyred nation maimed by partition, the spiritual beacon for a fallen, materialistic world, the magical model of neoliberalism, the penitent spendthrift anxious to prove its firm purpose of amendment. They all exhausted themselves – and us.
Ireland Economy Ideology National Identity Spending
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