This is the time of year when the parliamentary parties ready themselves to assemble for a couple of days at a time in quiet country hotels and get a roll out of the latest policy positions on which the next election may be fought. It appears that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will be trying to reposition themselves to catch the prevailing mood of popular discontent with policies on health, transport and anti-social behaviour. Fine Gael in particular are reported to be attracting more than the usual numbers at meetings organised around the latter, so the traditional party of law and order might be tapping into a rich vein of support.
Enda Kenny, in an interview with the Examiner, reflects the new conventional wisdom that that the economy won't win it for the government:
We accept that low taxes are generally good. But on a whole range of social fronts we have lost when we have won economically. It's what you do with those gains that matters for the future of the people.
I'm not at all happy with elements of this line of reasoning. Fair enough, it makes sense to attack the government for a whole range of social policy failures. But it's the assumption that the economy is basically sound that worries me. I am not convinced that our much vaunted economic prosperity is as stable and permanent as many assume. In 2001 Peadar Kirby published The Celtic Tiger in Distress and usefully situated recent domestic economic growth in the context of globalization and international political economy. I intend revisiting some of the themes in that book. In the meantime, I hope that when the parliamentary Labour Party have their think-fest, they might actually consider how issues of poverty and chronic insecurity need to be tackled or addressed as primarily economic problems. I won't hold my breath.
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