As I thought about a way of managing the future I couldn't help thinking about bringing up my children. As a parent you look at your children and hope they grow into a bright future. You try to manage their future. But if you try to micro-manage them and try to make every decision for them they rebel. You have to try to instil them with values that equip them to make the right decisions when faced with their challenges.
Managing the future is similar in a lot of ways. We need to decide on what destination we want Ireland to arrive at in the next decades. With a destination we have direction. With a direction we can make the right decisions.
To help me put some shape on what I believe our future should look like I looked back to our past. I reviewed the 1916 Proclamation and the Democratic Programme of the First Dáil. I believe the values and the vision contained in those two documents are still valid today. I believe they should be the foundation upon which we construct our own future. They have stood the text of time.
The authors of these documents, nearly 100 years ago, made a series of decisions that would manage Ireland' future. Looking back at the gritty black and white images of these people, I know they had no idea of the Ireland of 2005 but they had a vision of what it should look like and they set out to achieve it.
They were men and women of no property, poor means, with no administrative or government experience taking control of their own destiny..never an easy task. We moved from being a small colony looked after by an empire with financial clout, to a small independent impoverished republic.
In their view, freedom would give Ireland, as a nation, its own Government, which would guarantee: "the right to ownership of the land and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies", religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities for all its citizens, and a specific aim to "cherish all the children of the nation equally".
The Programme for the First Dáil carried on the vision of the 1916 Proclamation. It too was an ambitious one for an impoverished and emerging republic.
Their successors in the 1960's and 70's embraced these values and helped us steer a course through very challenging times. The men and women of 1916/21 couldn't have foreseen the difficulties industrialisation would cause us. They had to adapt to the changed circumstances and they did.
In 1987 the future was almost as unpredictable. We stood on the brink of an economic abyss.
If rumour is to be believed the first visitors Ray McSharry had as Minister for Finance, was from the International Monetary Fund!
Ireland was an "economic basket case". The election campaign of that year, my first for Dáil Eireann, is etched in my memory. Every household I called to had someone or all unemployed or in Australia, America or the U.K. 18% unemployed- 40,000 young people fleeing our shores annually 19% inflation and interest rates at nearly 20%. Real genuine poverty, both urban and rural.
We stood at a crossroads, a lot less appealing than DeValera's romantic vision of 50 years previously.
In extreme conditions like these vision is vital, in some cases because it is all we have to keep us moving. Shackleton, that famous explorer, stranded on an ice-flow a year from any other humans, used vision to inspire his men to keep trying when their present said they would die.
Decisions that needed vision needed to be made and they were made. Again, the values of the vision of 1916 were the bedrock for those decisions.
The evolution of Social Partnership as a mechanism for managing the future reflected a number of new developments;
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Various elements of Irish society shared an analysis of our collective problems;
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These elements shared a vision for the future
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And had the courage and leadership to make the difficult decisions and choices to achieve that vision.
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There is one common theme at all these junctures in Irish history, namely that you don't need to "know" the future to manage it. What you do need is a vision of what that future should be and the courage to strive for the goals to realise it.
Ireland to-day, thanks to the foresight and planning of Governments, the sacrifices of earlier generations and the hard work of many, is a rich country. I won't rhyme off the statistics, you know them. By any measure we are rich.
When we were poor, almost impoverished, in serious financial difficulty, those responsible for our fate took stock, decided what was needed and set out about achieving that.
Looking forward, we must now do the same. We are just over a decade away from the centenary of 1916. What better tribute to the brave men and women of 1916 than to set "centenary goals" worthy of their courage, their vision and their sacrifices.
One of those Centenary Goals should be to ensure that we create an Ireland where Protestant, Catholic, Dissenter, where everybody irrespective of class, creed or colour can live in a multi-cultural Ireland of welcomes.
For too long the mantle of true republicanism, the tenet of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity has been hijacked by those whose definition of Republicanism remained narrowly focused on a territory consisting of 32 counties and a nation catholic and native Irish - far from the noble aspirations of Tone, Pearse and others.
The aim should be to ensure those who hijacked "republicanism" into an narrow "Brits out" agenda should be exposed for what they are, the very opposite of the true Republicanism of 1916.
Although much has changed since 1916, some of the basic challenges remain the same. The republican ideals need to be restated for the modern world and specific goals set to achieve them within an agreed timescale.
I do not intend to start listing here what the Centenary Goals should be other than to say they should be agreed between the political system, social partners, civil society and representatives of the Churches. They should encompass aspects of Irish society that we need to address, with specific targets. We need to achieve agreement on how we pay for them. The Centenary Goals should be the product of a process leading to a national consensus on the specific targets.
Establishing Centenary Goals which set specific targets is one way of "Managing the Future". They become the top priorities. They are very visible and high profile.
This will require a step-change in how we operate our administrative systems. Despite criticisms our system has worked comparatively well when measured against other developed countries. It can be improved...in fact it has to be improved.
Suppose one of the Centenary Goals is to create a totally child-centred society? That would be very much in keeping with the 1916 Proclamation and the Democratic Programme of the First Dáil which stated that 'it shall be the first duty of the Government of the Republic to make provision for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of the children, to secure that no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing, or shelter, but shall be provided with the means and facilities requisite for their proper education and training.'
Under our current administrative arrangements it would be impossible to achieve such a goal. Not be because of any unwillingness or lack of commitment on behalf of the political and administrative systems but because of a lack of flexibility in those systems.
Despite all the reforms of recent years government departments still largely operate as 'silos' where Departments focus solely on their own programmes and ultimately their own ring-fenced part of the problem. This is quite simply too short sighted. The Budget and Estimates process should provide information and accountability on whole-of-government or cross cutting issues which are of real concern and immediate interest to citizens, issues such as poverty, childcare, environmental sustainability and research and innovation.
We need to introduce the concept of multi-year current expenditure plans with a greater emphasis on the outputs and outcomes, rather than inputs. We all need to place a greater emphasis on the results of our expenditure rather than how much we spend.
If we adopt this approach, you can truly hold government minister's accountable because the targets will be set and failure to achieve them will be very public.
That is what accountability should be about. This would also offer a chance for the opposition to engage in real politics.
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I'm afraid all the navel-gazing of Ireland's economic miracle leaves me feeling kinda hollow. I am not an economic unit. We are as individuals greater than the sum of our wealth (or our debts as the case may be.) We've plateaued in terms of our economic success. We now have an opportunity to pause for a while and make sure we are not leaving any individuals or groups behind.
I know that when the Economist rated Ireland as the number one place to live there was a sense of proud astonishment. A journal like that rates a country on a series of economic indicators. Ireland won the lotto and has risen from being 'Europe's poor cousin'.
We thought of some of the challenges still left to us; dealing with disadvantage, equality of access to healthcare and education, our young people's ability to find homes for themselves.
All challenges that can be overcome.
Many of the people of Ireland now sense that there is more to success than economics. Government needs to stop talking about economic growth, GDP, GNP, etc., and start talking and measuring things on the basis of their affect on people.
We know we have an economy that is the envy of the world. We can all be proud of that but we need to finish the job. There is a need to look at more than one measurement of success. Of course we do need to continue creating the wealth but now we need to focus on success in terms of quality of life for all of our people living and working in Ireland- the concept of the Balanced Scorecard.
This Balanced Scorecard will measure such indicators as the standard of living, reduction of absolute and relative poverty, quality of family life, quality of childcare, how we care for the elderly, multiculturalism, quality of housing, education, and health, and integrity in public and business life.
In my view, it has never been more important to have a framework that supports the identification and prioritisation of social spending
I am sure you will agree that all of these elements of the Balanced Scorecard are important in creating the type of society we wish for the future. I am also sure you will recognise just how strongly inter-dependent they are with economic growth, infrastructural development etc. In my view, we must build on our economic success and work towards delivering a more finely tuned balance on our Scorecard!
So let us use the wealth we have created, now as we have the 'unfettered control of our destiny' dreamt about in 1916 to ensure 'the equal rights and opportunities' espoused at that time. Government can and must set out the framework to achieve these objectives but Government cannot do it alone. A wider coalition is needed to reflect the new modes of governance and network of actors engaged in the delivery of services. This also requires more 'joined-up' government to ensure effective coordination across the
public sector.
As JFK said in Dublin 'We need [to] dream of thinks that never were and ask why not?' This is an imperative if we are to set about managing our future. It is a requirement for those of us who have been elected to do so.
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