Fractures in our society have been laid bare
As normal economic and social life has drained away, a troubling landscape of inequality has been uncovered, writes Eilis O’Hanlon
TWO summers ago, Ireland was experiencing its lowest rainfall for 160 years. The drought unexpectedly revealed the hitherto hidden outline of a 5,000-year-old prehistoric earthwork not far from Newgrange.
In a way, a similar phenomenon is happening with the coronavirus. As the waters of normal life recede, the social and economic landscape that it normally covers has been suddenly exposed, allowing us to see, as if for the first time, the cracks in the ground beneath.
The most alarming thing that has been revealed is the fragility of the economic foundations on which the country depends. Standing up to deliver his Budget 2020 speech last October, Paschal Donohoe was able to boast, despite the threat from Brexit, about “a well-run economy” founded on the “certainty of good Government and responsible politics”.
The economic drought of the last couple of months has shattered any complacency about Ireland’s economic vigour. Even with the fastest-growing employment figures in Europe in the last few years, a quarter of the jobs being created were low paid and insecure. In a speech last September, then Labour leader Brendan Howlin observed: “Full-time work no longer guarantees a person a decent standard of living.” Now the injustice is out in the open.
The destruction of the hospitality industry in a matter of weeks has equally revealed how reliant the country is on factors which can be snatched away without warning. Some 18pc of all jobs in Kerry, and 13pc in Donegal, are directly dependent on tourism. Nationwide, a total of 179,200 jobs come from providing accommodation and food alone, as well as 56,300 in arts and leisure. The number of jobs indirectly reliant on tourism is even greater, including over 300,000 in retail.
“An entire industry has been stopped in its tracks,” a report by Ernst and Young last month put it starkly, and it’s not clear how quickly, or at all, those jobs will come back. Many may be wary of travelling for some time to come.
As well as the economic fractures, Covid-19 has brutally exposed the social inequalities which persist. It can be seen in little things, such as who had a garden to sit in during lockdown, and who didn’t; and how many of those with gardens felt happy looking down their noses at, and denouncing, anyone without one who ventured outside to the park or the beach.
Many people were comfortably furloughed whilst the country dealt with the pandemic, whilst others had to continue working. Now as the time comes for people to return to work, the same divisions have been heightened, as those in certain sectors and industries seem to think it outrageous that they should be exposed to an elevated risk of infection despite being prepared for months now to let other essential workers, often among the lowest paid in society, face the danger. It’s not that we didn’t know certain people considered themselves to belong to a superior class, and regarded others beneath them in the hierarchy as a disposable surplus population, but it’s been shocking to see those who live from week to week, with no savings to cushion them from harm, being brutally reminded of their place in the pyramid.
In a similar way, big business has been saved at the expense of small, family-run enterprises. The inequality which was always there has not just been uncovered by Covid-19, but exacerbated.
The same fractures have been deepened in the education system. If the debate about cancelling the Leaving Cert did nothing else, it exploded the myth that there’s a level playing field in schools, that every child stands a chance. Pupils have been trying to home-school in vastly different environments, some with no internet, disruptive home lives, unsupportive parents.
Schools try as best they can to provide a buffer from social and economic reality, but Covid-19 tore it away. As for third level institutions, they were already struggling when compared with international rivals, meaning we’re starting much further back in the race for national self-sufficiency that’s been shown to be urgently necessary.
Of course, that inequality has been most brutally exposed in the healthcare system. The perennial public vs private health debate has come to a head, highlighting who lives and who dies, and why the poorest have been most severely impacted by the virus. More money will need to be found once it’s all over, but it’s not only about money.
GPs in deprived areas of Dublin have reported huge numbers of what they call the “unworried unwell”. Their expectations were so low that Covid-19 barely registered, and, even if they were infected, what could they do about it when they often had three generations living under the same roof, with no ability to self isolate?
It’s been said that the current crisis has shown how Slaintecare would look in action, with differences between public and private patients swept away; but even with the entire energy of the State focused on preventing excess deaths, there was no reason why the fundamentals of ordinary healthcare should have fallen apart as they did. The worst-case scenarios did not come to pass, but still cancer screening may not get back to normal levels for months, for reasons that are baffling to most patients. Despite massive increases in spending on health in the past decade, the system has been shown to be enormously vulnerable and slow to adapt when needed.
The ravages of Covid-19 have ripped away the veil on care homes too. The country now has one of the worst death rates in care homes in the world. The way in which we sideline the elderly as a nuisance and a burden, rather than people who have earned the right to be treated with respect and dignity, stand out as clearly as any ancient ruin brought to light by drought.
Sector by sector, inadequacies in the country’s infrastructure have been brought into sharp relief. Mental health services always struggled to cope with the demands put upon them, but Covid-19 has further revealed the broken stumps of misery and loneliness lying just below the surface.
The childcare industry was likewise groaning under the weight of increased costs and insurance premiums even before Covid-19.
Now parents in Ireland, who were paying the second highest childcare costs in the EU as it was, may find there are fewer places for their children when whatever passes for normality is eventually restored.
It’s even been suggested that increased usage at home in the crisis could strain Irish Water’s ability to meet demand this summer if there’s another drought.
With so much of the country in need of repair, how to prioritize which of the ruins to rebuild?
“There’s no such thing as free money,” Leo Varadkar warned last week, and it’s true that some of the expectations about what the State can and cannot do in the years to come, to plug the hole created by the Covid-19 shutdown, are unrealistic. Recovery will be hard.
The difference is that archaeologists don’t always know what’s hidden from sight until the waters recede. We all knew perfectly well where the fractures were in Irish society, we just chose to ignore them until it was too late, and now there’s no money to do anything other than paper over the cracks.