Options

Abstract

Part III in each of its three chapters outlined the core elements of what has become known as the Irish model, a model that has entered into a profound crisis. This final chapter assesses the options now facing Ireland amid the steps being taken to manage the crisis. While some may be quick to see this as the end of the Irish model, the quote with which this chapter opens reminds us that such an outcome is by no means assured and that a range of options are possible at a moment like this. The most that can be said is that the crisis opens a space of questioning and struggles, a discrediting of what was largely accepted as legitimate by most citizens while it seemed to deliver economic growth and employment opportunities. It is, then, a moment of new possibilities but who is going to seize these possibilities and for what requires careful analysis. This is the subject of this chapter.

The politics of recession often leads to the questioning of current orthodoxies and a ruthless reassessment of former beliefs and assumptions. The discrediting of a dominant set of assumptions creates new opportunities and new narratives. They do not always win through. The old order does not give up without a fight, since powerful interests have become associated with it and they resist change, and maintain that there is no reason why things should not go on in the old way. But new interests, as well as those interests subordinated within the old regime and forced to accommodate to it, now seize the initiative to press their case. If the crisis is deep enough and prolonged enough then the result can be a period of turbulence in ideology and in politics, in which a range of outcomes becomes possible.

Andrew Gamble (2009: 98)