Lise Hand: It's Prada handbags at dawn at MacGill Bummer School
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GOOD grief. It was not so much the MacGill Summer School as the MacGill Bummer School which kicked off its first full day in Glenties in Donegal yesterday.
Any unwary soul who skipped into the hall of this six-day talking-shop in search of a bit of escapism from the unrelenting torrent of ghastly news about the state of the nation would've found themselves tottering out with the shell-shocked demeanour of a cinema-goer who thought that 'Rosemary's Baby' was a chick-flick.
For the mood among the speakers was grimmer than an Anglo office party. If any of these boys (and boys they almost all were, with just one female among the 13 academics, economists, gurus and politicians) had spotted any class of a green shoot or silver lining, they were keeping it firmly to themselves.
The pointy-heads were out for blood. They had been saving up all their grudges and grievances, and promptly turned on the government to administer a good kicking, while throwing around portents of doom like snuff at a wake.
The mood was set by consultant Eddie Molloy, who painted an apocalyptic picture. "These are terrible times. I would compare the state of the country to one that has been involved in war," he declared. "The state's coffers are empty, many people will die, a whole generation whom we have reared and educated will be lost and we are faced with bulldozing derelict buildings across the country," he proclaimed, as the audience collectively reached for the nearest bottle of gin.
Holy God. But if this wasn't enough to put the frighteners on the stoutest of hearts, then he was succeeded by Ed Walsh, founding president of the University of Limerick, who upped the scare ante even further. "Ireland is in the gravest danger of economic and social disintegration since the foundation of the State," he reckoned.
But in among the gloom there was one brief nugget of levity, courtesy of bearded wise-man of the ESRI, John FitzGerald. In a fun example of a chap of his serious ilk thinking outside the boring box, John dissed the government's car-scrappage scheme, and replaced it with one of his own. "If the government had announced they were going to have a handbag-scrappage scheme for Prada handbags, and that Prada handbags worth €5,000 if handed in in good condition would be scrapped, and you would have an allowance to buy a new one in Brown Thomas, it would have exactly the same impact on unemployment in this society as the car-scrappage scheme, promoted by the Society of Irish Handbag Industry," he announced, earning immediate brownie points for knowing that one can buy Prada bags at BTs.
But it was a rare light moment in a long day of doom and gloom. One of the debate's chairs, former chairman of Superquinn Vincent O'Doherty, half-joked to the audience: "If you didn't come scared this morning, you surely are scared now".
That's the trouble about being in this beautiful but remote part of Ireland. In the Glenties nobody can hear you scream.
- Lise Hand
Irish Independent
