Ireland’s risk-averse nature holds us back – it’s Harris’s job to change the playbook

‘If there’s regret, it would be excessive caution at certain points,” Leo Varadkar said in his parting speech. It was a moment of introspection, or perhaps just an attempt at legacy management. Either way, it’s a parting shot that’s worth dissecting. “In 2011-2012, we never thought the economy would bounce back so quickly from the crash,” he told the Dáil.

“When the pandemic happened, we never thought the economy would bounce back so quickly, and because of that there were big investment decisions and spending decisions that we could have made a year or two earlier that would put us in a better position today when it comes to things like housing, but unfortunately, that was the advice at the time and we took it,” he said.

It’s a truth that many of us have long suspected: Ireland’s reluctance to take risks has often held us back. Whether it is the aftermath of the crash or the response to the pandemic, our penchant for caution has left us trailing behind, timidly following the lead of other countries rather than charting our own course.

Hindsight, as they say, is a wonderful thing. And as we look into Varadkar’s rear-view mirror, we can’t help but wonder what might have been if we had embraced a bit more recklessness along the way. Maybe we wouldn’t have found ourselves stuck in a never-ending cycle of lockdowns and restrictions at the behest of Nphet or grappling with a housing crisis that seems to have no end in sight.

Ireland has always had a bit of a complex when it comes to forging our own path. We’re like the kid at the back of the class who’s too afraid to speak up in case we get the answer wrong. So instead, we sit quietly, diligently copying our neighbour’s homework and hoping nobody notices.

From the outset, Ireland’s response to the pandemic was a textbook example of cautiousness gone awry. We found ourselves stuck in a never-ending cycle of lockdowns and restrictions. Our Level 5 restrictions were tougher than those in every other country in the EU.

Ireland sat close to the top spot in a global “stringency index” developed by Oxford

University’s Blavatnik School of Government.

And unlike so many other countries across the EU, we kept restrictions like social distancing, mask-wearing and limits on the numbers of people allowed to meet each other indoors and outdoors going for 20 months.

This cautious response to Covid-19 cost us almost €30bn during the first two years of the pandemic – mostly on business supports. If you force a business to close you have to finance it.

It also meant that we were completely unprepared to cope with the influx of refugees and migrants when Ireland finally opened up.

Homelessness is at a record high – with the most recent figures showing 13,841 people were in emergency accommodation. There’s a cost to excessive caution – and it’s one that’s all too often paid by those least able to afford it.

Even if you have the money, you can’t buy a house. The number of properties listed for sale on MyHome.ie hit a new record low of 10,935 – well below the pandemic trough of 11,200, and down 19.5pc on the year.

Prices keep on going up. We have had 10 ECB interest rate hikes but still, prices are rising not going down. Eighty per cent of people over the age of 40 own their own home, just a third of adults under 40 do.

Rents are spiralling. They rose by an average of almost 7pc last year to an average of €1,850 a month, according to Daft.ie. That’s up by a staggering €485 from €1,365 in early 2020.

I’ve no doubt memories of the property bubble bursting still haunt the collective consciousness of policymakers. I’m old enough to remember the ghost estates. The recession hit, and just like that, the construction of social housing stopped. Better safe than sorry, right?

And so, in the aftermath of the crash, the Government adopted a hesitant stance on house-building, fearing a repeat of it and hoping the market would just correct itself.

I’ve been writing about housing for 10 years. It used to seem like it could be solved if we waited long enough but then a million more people arrived here. And the goalposts moved again. This failure to see the gaping gap in supply and demand is unforgivable. But it’s the Irish way – caution first.

We have tens of billions of euro to spare – a staggering €65.2bn surplus forecasted over the next four years – meaning the Government should be in the enviable position of having more money than it knows what to do with. And as the coffers swell and the surplus grows, so too do the expectations of the public.

Caution is a criticism that has dogged Simon Harris through his political career so far and yes, he’s barely one week into the job, but there comes a point when caution morphs into cowardice, when prudence becomes paralysis. Will he find that sweet spot?