It was D.W. Hock, founder of the Visa card in 1976 that transformed Retailing and enormously impacted upon all our lifestyles, who famously wrote in his book of 1999, entitled “The Birth of the Chaordic Age”: “This is a story of the future, of something trying to happen, of a 400-year-old age, rattling in its deathbed as another struggles to be born – a transformation of consciousness, culture, society, and institutions such as the world has never experienced.” How right he was, such foresight. At that time, Ireland was basking in a boom period of glorious economic invincibility that we fondly called the Celtic Tiger. Ten years later, we were experiencing a calamitous bust period, amidst the Global Economic Crash of 2008, wincing from the pain of an IMF Bail-out during the consequential decade of Austerity from which many are still financially recovering. Now, twenty years on, Ireland is facing the immediate herculean challenge of rebuilding its Economy once again following the COVID pandemic 2020, and just as the post-Brexit, 2021 era looms. Locked into an age of dramatic once-in-a-lifetime change that is disrupting and threatening lives daily as spontaneously as it is unexpected, the old Economy is indeed dying while a new Economy is struggling to be born. We can see that more clearly now, twenty years after D.W.’s shared his foresight. We realise by now that we need a comprehensive new vision for the Ireland of tomorrow when, post-Brexit, Ireland will be the only European country with English as its first language. Ireland has also become a central participant in the rebuilding of the European Economy too, holding several key European Commissioner posts just as that dual Covid19/ Brexit challenge simultaneously unfolds across Europe’s 27 countries. Currently, Ireland has just entered Stage 2 of COVID-19 at Level 2 of its 5-Level plan called “Resilience and Recovery 2020-2021: Plan for Living with COVID-19”. Irish Schools have reopened, our Universities are going online, and Government-subsidised employees in the Workforce are adapting to the rigours of Online Working from Home. On 30th August the Irish Examiner reported: “The temporary wage subsidy scheme (TWSS) that has supported businesses impacted by Covid-19 restrictions since March closes on Monday and is to be replaced by the new employment wage subsidy scheme (EWSS). More than €2.7bn has been given to 69,500 employers via the TWSS, covering more than 600,000 workers. The new EWSS will operate until the end of March 2021 and is expected to cost €2.25bn — €1.35bn in 2020 and €0.9bn in 2021.” At the same time, foreign travel restrictions have started to ease, and will soon be part of a pan-European travel regional grading plan. With Online Working from Home has already been established as a new work option, Village Life, Urban and Rural, has taken on a contemporary appeal but with a big difference.
The Villages want to move the spotlight from value-driven Corporates to values-driven Communities as they explore and develop alternative ways of collaborating to solve the many challenging social, economic, financial and digital problems that seriously threatens their worldview. They observe how Corporate values have created a grave Inequality Divide that undermines world stability today, as surrounded and protected by secrets, lies, uneasy silence, unwitting innocents, and media spun deception. They awant to open the door to a fairer and more ethical world, one that is no longer under the spell of a few gigantic brands and a busload of uber-wealthy elites in this 21st Century. These they perceive to decry, demonise and destroy all opposition crossing their path without consequence, regardless of the apparent implications for people, planet or meaningful purpose and all in the name of excess profits, greed. Instead, they empathise with those people who feel left behind, socially excluded and voiceless in their Communities and broader Society. They relate to those who feel disadvantaged, disenfranchised or trapped in the ranks of the unemployed, low-income earners, the digitally disengaged or those left languishing, undervalued and often disillusioned among their Ageing Populations. Their Communities dream of collaboration and of cooperatively discovering their authentic Voice, one that delivers the scale of a difference they’d love to see in their lifetime and that of their family, friends, and broader Community. That ubiquitous challenge is the theme of A Village Vista 2020.
The Villages wish to end the brain drain of Migration and Emigration, to retain the young people in their Community of birth and aalso to attract home, through more meaningful job opportunities, those who had to leave home in search of work and a decent future during each previous Downturn. They want to engage other vital skilled workers too, that would collectively enable them to build an alternative way of life through the co-creation of Community-owned, Cooperative-based and independenty controlled Social Enterprises. Besides, that would hold immense appeal too for Irish Emigrants who are intending Returnees, those who in their hearts wish to return to the land of their birth for work, to rear their children, to share life with the friends, family or to retire among those they have loved and love. The majority of Irish Emigrants carry a deep sense of longing and belonging, a fire that has burned unquenched in their hearts, that has been nourished and preserved throughout the last one hundred and seventy-five years, ever since the Great Irish Exodus of mid 1800s. It was the time when millions sought refuge through Emigration from their famine-stricken little island country, leaving a yawning gulf of separation between their Irish and adopted homeplaces that remains to this day. In his thoroughly researched book, entitled: “Paddy’s Lament. Ireland 1846-7, Prelude to Hatred”, Thomas Gallagher recounts in graphic detail one of the greatest stories seldom authentically told of a then doomed and voiceless country, of how “this accident of nature influenced the course of history in three nations- Ireland, England and the United States of America”, adding insightfully “If the past is prologue, we would do well to heed it.” Its is a compelling and powerful narrative of its devastating consequences following the catastrophic failure of their blight-ridden potato crops when the entire nation was faced, literally overnight, with starvation, eviction, disease, death or the last refuge in mass Emigration. It is a compelling story “that captures the anguished voice of the famine victim while equally shedding considerable light on current attitudes and events”. Today, we can finally start to address their oft-forgotten but dreadful dilemma, provide answers that have only been made possible by the arrival of the digital age with the vast, almost hidden, opportunities it offers to reach out across borders. This solution has the power to reunite the Global Irish wherever the Green is worn and together to serve as a beacon that will shine a light on the scale of Social Inclusion the world desperately needs right now. As the brain drain ends, this new brain gain will re-energise those Villages and The Villagers alike.
Meanwhile, as the race to find a COVID vaccine draws to a close, our people continue to crave for certainty in a most uncertain era. Living with the Virus, under the Government programme just released, is designed to guide us safely through the year ahead as we confront those twin COVID/ Brexit challenges, as faced on four fronts – social, economic, financial and digital. Increasingly, our minds turn to Economic Recovery once more. While life goes on and we must move with it, we ought not to seek to return, however, to the lifestyles we had prior, or we risk learning little from the ultra costly lesson that the Coronavirus is still teaching us in all of our Counties and Communities. After all, we learned precious little from its 1918 predecessor, which we grossly understated in calling it The Big Flu, and which was equally misnamed in Europe as the Spanish Flu to this day. Yet, that catastrophic 1918-19 epidemic caused the end of WWI. Dr Ida Milne’s research found that, in just two years, a quarter of the Irish population, or 800,000 people, became infected with that virus, while 23,000 died.
Fortunately, over the past half-a-dozen decades, the IDA Development Authority has secured Ireland’s position as a lead player in that Big Pharma World. Today, Pharma Logistics are now about to move to centre-stage in readiness for its part in the gigantic task of delivering future coronavirus vaccine solutions to billions of people. The IATA group, representing 290 airlines, did not understate it when they recently estimated the need for 8,000 747 cargo aircraft to ship enough vaccine vials for a single dose per person worldwide. On 11th September 2020, IATA’s Director General and CEO, Alexandre de Juniac, told the Guardian newspaper: “Safely delivering Covid-19 vaccines will be the mission of the Century for the global air cargo industry. But it won’t happen without careful advance planning. And the time for that is now. We urge governments to take the lead in facilitating cooperation across the logistics chain so that the facilities, security arrangements and border processes are ready for the mammoth and complex task ahead.” Pre-COVID, we left far too many people floundering behind in the wake of that Celtic Tiger decade which persuaded so many people that greed was so good. No! We need new, more innovative, and socially inclusive thinking. In short, Rural and Urban Villages alike need an authentic Village Vista 2020 that reflects who we are as a people.
To achieve that, we need a paradigm shift of mindsets, not just in Ireland but in Europe too. Apart from the all-consuming Codid/Brexit demands in time and money, there is an underlying European-wide Inequality study to which we ought to pay apt attention, one calling for a European Social Model in response. Social Justice Ireland published the European Report with its findings of the 15th June 2020, confirming that the social and economic crisis remains widespread across Europe, a decade after the Crash of 2008. Recorded before Covid-19 reached our shores but published during the pandemic, it missed receiving adequate attention, to such as: “Over ten years on from the financial crash, and after six years of economic growth, (and) before the onset of Covid-19, right across the European Union there were 16.8 million people Unemployed, with 6.65 million people Long-term Unemployed, representing over 40 per cent of Total Unemployment across the E.U.; 86 million people were living in Poverty, of whom 19 million were Children…this presents significant challenges as Europe grapples with the social and economic consequences of the current crisis.” These are stark realities indeed, pointing as they do to hard evidence – most worryingly being that of Child Poverty, to the so-called NEETs (young people not engaged in employment, education or training) trends as well as to escalating Work Poverty (‘the working poor’). Strikingly, the European series report found that of the 86 million people who were living with poverty in E.U., 6 million more people were affected in 2018 than were affected in 2008. In particular, the one-fifth of Europe’s children (around 19.2 million) who are currently living with poverty remains a significant concern for Europe due to its self-evident long-term consequences. Consequently, according to that E.U. Report series of 15th June 2020, suitably entitled: “A Rising Tide Failing to Lift all Boats.”, Europe remains far off-track in meeting its poverty reduction targets. The E.U.’s social and economic initiatives have failed to lift all boats. Now, in this time of the unprecedented Covid-19 crisis, it calls for the European Union to heed the harsh lessons from the financial crash of 2008 and to emphasise the overriding need for Investment (driven by the Private Sector) rather than Austerity (directed by the Public Sector). Social Justice Ireland called, in addition, for a European Social Model that can meet the challenges of these realities, stating that “a more integrated social dimension across the European Union is required.”
Irish People have lived through many centuries of suffering and suppression and so is uniquely positioned to understand and readily empathise with the pain of People who all over the world are suffering similar fates today. They increasingly understand the horrors of famine, the heartbreak and economic consequences of mass Emigration, the humiliation of colonisation, the health implications of deprivation, the tragic consequences of war, the suppression of culture and native language as well as the all-too-fleeting economic highs of The Celtic Tiger. Now, countless stories from our Ancestral Past that have remained hidden painfully behind a Wall of Silence have started to emerge, manifesting themselves in the foundation stones of an emerging Village Vista 2020. The raging old arguments about the superiority of benefits a Public versus Private Sector Economy that existed until now misses the point. The case ought to be about empowering, in parallel, a Social Economy of the Third Sector, that would harness the Social Economy values espoused in that E.U. Report 2020. It alone is capable of delivering the Equality of Opportunity and Reward for which Society has been crying out for decades. Ireland is ready and positioned to champion such a role-model that would start to address the predicament the world faces today materially. Informed by that Ancestral Past, we have observed the ravages wrought by Inequality, Poverty and Homelessness in that deadly decade of Austerity, 2008-18. We watched helplessly as the social fabric of our Communities was hollowed out by the consequences of mass Emigration once again. We saw how we responded ineffectively, proferring the same old solutions as in every other Downturn, thus ensuring the same sad outcomes as throughout the Century and a half before. We have, however, listened to the raging Public versus Private arguments until acutely aware of both their vast differences and also shared deficiencies in the providing the answers needed across health services, pension entitlements, affordable houses, social safety nets, and job security. With a sigh of resignation, we observed how both the Public and Private sectors in Ireland struggled in vain to address Social Exclusion in its many forms. We have not learned the lessons of life so far, but we can do so now. Until then, the Villages of Ireland will continue to suffer brain drain, and decline until we add the limitless, untapped power of a Social Economy of the Third Sector.
Eriuvation: A Village Vista 2020 