Now we have to pay the price for never saying no
Jonathan Swift said a wise man has money in his head but not in his heart. And that's where it all went wrong for Ireland. We did the reverse.
This is the reason we're stupefied to find our incomes drastically truncated, our expectations clipped, our hopes for recovery castrated.
And while this Budget may be death by a thousand cuts, a great many of us handled the knife.
We are too quick to claim victim status -- let's not forget how eagerly we bought into the greed.
In the process, we disregarded the corruption, the corporate cronyism, the stickiness of that interface between politics and business.
So long as it meant the jobs market was buoyant, credit was cheap and we could buy treats, we turned a blind eye.
Now we're paying a stiff price -- and the blame that can and should be attached to politicians, bankers, property developers and regulators does not let us off the hook.
Who needed a recession to understand weekend shopping trips to New York on the never-never were profligate? That driving ostentatious motors on borrowed money -- cars which depreciated the minute they were driven off the forecourt -- was foolhardy? That releasing equity (perhaps only notional equity) from houses to snap up holiday homes or rental properties was wanton?
I feel sorry for young couples duped into paying over the odds for properties on rabbit-warren estates in commuter towns.
They did not create this rats' nest, yet they are among its biggest victims. We have condemned them to some rocky years ahead.
As for the rest of us, we were under no obligation to accept the gimme-gimme values that evolved.
We are not sheep. Yet many of us tolerated a political and cultural ethos which we knew in our hearts was wrong.
Who needed the Anglo 10 scandal to grasp that a golden circle operated in Ireland? We all suspected it but nobody cared, beyond the odd grumble, until we realised our own pockets would be picked to set the mess to rights.
Who needed a banking collapse to understand that the way land was rezoned for housing was questionable? Or that the intimate relationship between property developers and politicians was a recipe for profiteering?
Who needed a degree in economics to work out that a 100pc mortgage was risky, especially when the buyer loaded up on additional debt to furnish the property and pay legal fees? Let's acknowledge some responsibility.
Anyone who ever bought an item from a shop with dual sterling-euro price tags could see at a glance they were being ripped off.
But the murmurs only reached a crescendo when customers became straitened for cash.
There are people more culpable than us for this savage Budget -- but few of us can escape a share in the guilt.
We could point the finger at the regulator for failing to rein in banks' lending policies; but we were the ones who borrowed the money.
We were encouraged to live beyond our means; but the power was ours to say no. The boom gave us a taste of material wealth -- we licked our lips and liked it.
Were we lied to? Of course. By bankers and by politicians, among others. But a banker's job is to boost profits for his bank -- a politician's is to serve the electorate.
Fianna Fail has held unbroken power for 12 years -- years in which it persistently pumped the property bubble full of air and behaved as though sharp implements were never invented. It could have guided us towards a soft landing.
Instead, the party failed to take tough decisions. It courted popularity.
Our political masters refused to listen to repeated warnings about an overheated property market.
They kept life sweet for their builder buddies long after property development should have been discouraged. Let's not forget the Galway Tent has only just been dismantled.
But we allowed Fianna Fail to stay in government. A sizeable tranche of voters stifled their doubts because it was preferable to believe the good times would roll into infinity. While some might argue they did not tick the Fianna Fail box, the party did amass wider support than any other.
Both our current Taoiseach and his predecessor were finance ministers -- and they guided us straight for the rocks. Brian Lenihan, a decent man doing a gargantuan job, has been landed with the salvage operation. But the ship of state remains a wreck.
Now we must swallow some bitter, bitter pills.
For me, the real pain of this Budget lies in the realisation it will not dissolve enough of our problems. Its measures reducing mortgage relief and hiking capital gains tax will deflate the property market still further. No floor is in sight.
The Government is peddling the following deal: "You'll feel the squeeze now, but a solution will follow. Trust us."
I don't. Not after the boom they inflated, and not after this Budget.
However, we cannot finger-point at our leaders, bankers and effete regulators without confessing to collusion in the myth --we should not conveniently forget how well we liked the bling. In that sense, we were complicit.
It reminds me of Agatha Christie's 'Murder on the Orient Express': each of the 12 suspects stabbed the victim once, and nobody knew who delivered the fatal blow.
There are fingerprints a-plenty on the hilt of the knife delivering the coup de grace to the Celtic Tiger.
mdevlin@independent.ie
