Ireland's Crisis

Listening in to Drive Time on RTE Radio 1 yesterday, I heard Fergus Finlay of Bernardo’s offer a reflection on the current economic plight of the Republic. Using the match at Croke Park last Saturday as an example of what a team pulling together can achieve he segued into a surreal thought. At half-time during the game he wondered how much money it would take to cover the Croke Park pitch and later at home he did some calculations.

To cover the grass with 50 euro notes would cost 57m. This means that the country has already committed enough money to cover Croker to a depth of 1 foot to recapitalise Irish banks. And if you add in the deposit guarantee scheme, amounting to a commitment of up to 1 trillion euro, this covers the pitch to the height of an average room.

Now discounting the rather naff teamwork analogy at the beginning, what made the reflection exceptional was the connection he made to other social injustices in Ireland, and here are some of the details.

He argues that we were told we had to save the banks in order to save the economy. There was no conversation about it, no debate. We just had to. But before the financial crisis hit, we couldn’t find the money needed to prevent cervical cancer in the country.

The total amount for that would have probably covered the corner flag area.

Nor could we find the money to provide every community with a good modern school. Nor enough to provide traveller children with a decent education – money which wouldn’t even have covered the centre spot.

Before the money all went, he said, we couldn’t find the pittance to sustain a decent society. Now that it’s all gone we managed to find an unimaginable sum to repair the damage caused by a greedy, reckless few.

Never, he says, never let them tell us again, that it can’t be done.

You can find a podcast of Monday’s programme here. Finlay’s column is  about 20 mins in.