TIME TO SINK OR SWIM

In the middle of the present rather straitened times, it may seem a bit previous, as they say in Cavan, to be talking about the recession bottoming out. well, actually, in its own rather weary wary piddly way, it is.

How do we know this?

Forget Europe for a start. Look to the USA. Over there, the government’s index of leading economic indicators continues to rise. Consumer spending is up. Construction is up. Even manufacturing is on the rise.

In the third quarter, the economy grew at 2.8% as opposed to 0.8% in the first quarter, and 1.9% in the second. Factories, apparently, are operating at 82% of capacity, which is said to be a very crucial threshold. This has some people worried. The kind of people who believe that modest inflation is a worse evil than mass unemployment. Those apart, the yanks are getting bullish.

This bullishness is behind Bill Clinton’s enthusiasm for the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) deal, and his espousal of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation area.

He and his analysts reckon that Europe is done for, that its wars and oldfart systems of production are so out of kilter with the new global economic order that they might as well be ignored (more or less) by the emergent economic superpowers of APEC.

APEC, for the record, includes Australia, Canada, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and the USA.

Like them or not, that’s a lot of economic muscle. A lot of loaves and fishes, me ould brown son.

But it has a lot of implications for a small open economy like Ireland. On the one hand, if they squeeze we get squashed. On the other, if we have something they want, we get lucky.

So what could that be?

Well, let’s begin at the beginning. There’s our potential as a centre of expertise. We can hire ourselves out, as peacekeepers, as doctors, as nurses, as construction engineers and developers, as farmers and agribusiness experts, as teachers and as trainers, as poets and musicians, as pathfinders and facilitators, as manipulators and sweet talkers.

What I am referring to is work along the model of the PARK company established by Aer Lingus, which built and ran hospitals, in particular in the Middle East, but across a far wider range of occupational areas. They may not now be what they were, but that is to do with Saddam Hussein’s adventurism and Aer Lingus’s current problems. It is not that the idea was inherently faulty.

PARK has many parallels in other areas. Like construction, where Irish firms are international players, tendering and trading on the world market, building from Buenos Aires to Boston to Berlin to Bahrain.

One might also refer to Guinness Peat Aviation which, before its downfall, was the key factor in the world aviation business. Again, Saddam’s bid for world domination screwed them. But that doesn’t mean the idea was bad. It wasn’t.

It’s just that their timing was off, and they overreached themselves at exactly the point when the Iraqi despot’s adventurism brought the world’s economic possibilities crashing down.

But comparable companies are certainly a viable possibility, operating on the same global scale.

It is the other side of the coin to the FAS placement service which locates Irish people in European jobs. What I’m talking about is Irish companies hustling on the world stage to provide services that the world needs.

The point is, in the end, that the Irish are really good at a lot of things. All they need is a series of mechanisms to turn it on. Establishing international service companies seems a good way to get in on the action.

But that’s just one side. Another is to be found at home. In tourism, and especially cultural tourism. It has probably escaped your attention, but Ireland is big news in the very countries that Clinton is bullishly promoting as the APEC group.

Big in Japan. But it’s true. All that mystical stuff, all that island magic, all that poetry and music, legend and history is a very tradeable commodity. But they need a few infrastructural supports...

Like being able to fly in to the airport of their choice. Like being able to rent a car relatively cheaply. Like having the lines of the culture laid bare before them. Like being able to go to the theatre and see those great mystical works.

But not in the same stupid condescending style that is so beloved of fading generations of Irish Americans. No shamrocks or shillelaghs. Just think of Clannad and Enya and Yeats and Van Morrison and Seamus Ennis and U2.

Advertisements in French showing Sean Kelly out for a cycle, saying “Ireland ... you never know who you’ll run into”..

The same ads of U2 leaving one of their favourite pubs. Or of Seamus Heaney patiently watching a pint settle.

And access is important. The Japanese may like to travel where it is co-ordinated and safe. But do they want to visit interpretive centres? What people come here for is the very disorganisation, the looseness, the island culture. We should be very careful about losing it.

On a more mundane level, the emergent boom in the States may open up some more meaningful opportunities for Irish people to emigrate. Nobody likes the idea. Nobody would recommend it. But sometimes needs must, and if there’s jobs in the States, well Mick and Mary should get their mugs in the gate. As ever.

At the back of all the positive possibilities, however, must lie a deep sense of the fickleness of things, the stupidity of so many leaders, and the waste of time and money and above all human resources that we’ve seen over the last fifteen years.

Date it back to Thatcher and Reagan if you will. I’m talking about the ideology of the second half of the 20th century. The one that says that craft doesn’t matter. That a lifetime’s commitment is a lifetime’s stupidity. That belittles human worth in favour of that last extra penny’s profit.

There is a basic question to be asked. Which is the fundamental, people or capital? For me it's people. You make your own choice.

But remember this, there is no sitting on the fence. Unemployment here is on a colossal scale. And it is that big because somewhere along the line we lost our belief in each other, and began to accept that what other people said was what really mattered.

Unemployed people are just that. Unused persons. Sure, there are wasters and layabouts and criminals among them. Same as everywhere else. But the majority are not. They all have gifts and possibilities. And entitlements.

They are citizens, and as such equal to the highest and mighiest in the land. The pressing task is to find ways of bringing them into the working environment. To work, as everyone is entitled to.

Like I said, you put one thing first or the other. Jobs and people, or economies and profit. Make your choice. But remember what Eldridge Cleaver used to say: if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

• The Hog