Gavin Duffy – Entrepreneur, Media Coach, Dragon's Den Presenter, Public Speaker

I don’t know about you but as a business person I get really frustrated with all the negative media coverage of our economic crisis. Of course it has to be reported but over and over? I question that. Anyway I wrote this article. It has nothing to do with Dragons’ Den but I hope it might give you some food for thought. Apologies to the many international followers I have here on the blog as this is very much about our Irish Poliutical system.

Our nation faces its gravest, darkest crisis. Our banking system has collapsed. It is on a life support system of unsustainable national borrowings. When the banking system collapses that means the Political Establishment itself, the First Estate, has failed. The very proof of that is, not only have we lost confidence in Brian Cowen, but we appear to have little faith in an alternative Fine Gael and Labour Government lead by Enda Kenny. The Irish People have just lost all faith in the Political Establishment. The First Estate is now a bigger zombie than all the combined zombie banks it is propping up with our money.

The second Estate – and in Ireland that means, the Catholic Hierarchy – “has lost (all) credibility”. The degree of credibility lost depends on which Archbishop you are listening to, Dublin or Canterbury. So we can’t look there for moral leadership in our valley of tears.
The Third Estate, the Judiciary, fails us because the wheels of Justice move ever so slowly. We, the people, clamour for Justice to be seen to be done in regard to those who are deemed responsible for bankrupting our nation.

So the country is in effect being run by the Fourth Estate, the Media. “It is very bad and wrong and demoralising. We are dominated by Journalism.” This statement equally applies today to our national crisis as when Oscar Wilde said it in 1891. The very phrase, the Fourth Estate, was coined by another Irish man, Edmund Burke in 1787. Of course Burke was referring to the four elements of British Parliament, the Lords Spiritual, Temporal, the Commons and the Fourth Estate, the Press Gallery.

When the Political Establishment totally fails, the default option is real power transfers to the Media. This is not always a bad thing and sometimes in history was necessary. The very soul of the United States of America was saved by the Fourth Estate when Woodward and Bernstein exposed the corruption of Nixon leading to his resignation in 1974.

Good Friday’s Late Late Show featured “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”, journalists, Matt Cooper, Kevin Myers, Sarah Carey and Ger Colleran. They told us yet again, as the media does on an hourly basis, the country is financially and morally bankrupt and endemically and incurably corrupt. Fitting for a Good Friday they crucified any hope or prospect of a resurrection for our little nation.

 
Most depressing was you could not actually argue with one word that was said. But how often do we have to hear this? This caused even the mild mannered Ryan Tubridy to ask his audience, “why don’t we take to the streets and protest?” No one asked Ryan, “to achieve what?”

 
The problem with the Fourth Estate calling the shots is journalists are first and foremost reporters. They report brilliantly on what has happened but the nature of their work means it is always a look back rather than a look forward. It is not in their DNA to tell us how to get out of the hole.

It is their job to compete with one another telling you how awful the hole is. And they see their job primarily as finding out who is responsible for creating the hole. So who dug it? Did they have planning permission? Where was the Regulator for holes? Was the hole planned in the Galway tent? Who ignored the signs warning us to avoid the hole? Was the contract for the warning signs awarded to the Minister’s brother-in-law? And a whole raft of FOIs about the hole.

Eventually as they all race to the bottom of the hole, one will break rank and call for those who supplied the shovels to dig the hole to be taken out and shot. The defence, I was only reporting what the people think anyway. The question is never asked could the people be thinking like that because for two years they’ve been told nothing else other than they have no future and the country is doomed? 

The media also peddles the propaganda it was obvious the hole was there. It is frequently claimed that George Lee forewarned us. Well not loud and clear enough for his employers, RTE, who seemed more than a bit surprised and badly caught out with the very large €85 million hole that appeared in their advertising revenue  last year.

Now you may have a pain in your own, you know what, listening, watching and reading all of the reports of what a hellhole it is. But one fact remains, we owe it to ourselves and to our children, whose future we are mortgaging by about €70m per day, to climb our way, as a nation, out of this hole.

If we are to really pull ourselves out of the hole, we have to wrestle control back from the Fourth Estate, the Media and put the First Estate, the people, back in control. The answer – a Grand Coalition. This occurs when a National Crisis is so serious it dictates that the two largest Political Parties form the Government. In history, at least fifteen countries in their darkest hours have seen their Politicians not just talk about putting the country first but actually do that and enter Government with their sworn enemies. In Germany, Canada, India, the Nederlands, Austria, too many to mention, it has achieved spectacular results.

This Government is on its last legs, it may fall any moment or may waddle, as a lame duck, for the rest of this year. But there will be a General Election in 2011. We need to debate now the issue of a Grand Coalition. Surely, faced with our Nation’s greatest crisis, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail should work together. The international support there would be for a solid Grand Coalition would knock at least half a per cent off our debt interest charge. That factor alone makes it worthy of the most serious consideration.
The Grand Coalition taking office in 2011 with a Five Year Programme could complete the job of doing all the heavy lifting for putting our country to right by 2016, a fitting way to mark the centenary of the 1916 Rising. Here before us, after almost 100 years, we have the perfect opportunity to once and for all bury civil war politics in the interest of the people.

But why would Fine Gael make such a generous offer to its old enemy Fianna Fail? Because it would not be the “old” Fianna Fail. In 2011 it would be the new Fianna Fail, bruised, battered and beaten having suffered the wrath of the electorate at the ballot box. It would be the ethnically, electorally cleansed Fianna Fail. But it will still be a party of at least 55 TDs.

So here are the alternatives to a Grand Coalition:
The Expected Result – A Fine Gael and Labour Coalition. Do we really believe with massive economic issues to be resolved that such a coalition of compromises is the best option? If anything Fine Gael and Labour have grown further apart ideologically in the last two years.

The Not To Be Unexpected Result – A Hung Dail or a Minority Government, meaning further, deepening crisis.

The Unexpected Result – A series of elections and Fianna Fail back in power with the aid of Labour, Sinn Fein, The Greens and/or the army of Independents that will get elected in 2011 and any subsequent re-runs of that election.
But what if the Fourth Estate, the Media, has got it wrong and Enda Kenny is actually a real leader?  Could he be the Taoiseach at the head of an historical and truly dynamic, progressive and successful Grand Coalition? Of course there will be Politicians and Hacks who will say that it will never work as they did about Paisley and McGuinness. But for our Island nation there is within our grasp the prospect of marking the 1916 centenary with Sinn Fein and the DUP in Government in the North working peacefully and Fine Gael and Fianna Fail in Government in the South working productively.

Even his detractors say Kenny is decisive and thinks outside the box. He won’t welcome it but he certainly won’t rule out the prospect of a Grand Coalition because it creates a real headache for Fianna Fail. If they say “no way” it means they are being small minded in the face of such a big crisis causing the loss of even more seats. If they publicly consider it they are accepting Fine Gael as an equal. So expect silence but deep down both parties know if they could stop digging in the past they could actually start building the future.

For Fianna Fail, ever the pragmatists, there is the prize of establishing itself as the one real party of Government. It would see them actually putting the country first and preparing the ground to be in with a fighting chance to win the subsequent election and be in power for the centenary of the birth of our Nation in 2021.

If Padraig Pearse, James Connolly et al died to give us self determination by the people, the majority of the people probably now want the biggest ever Irish solution to the biggest ever Irish problem – A Grand Coalition.