An ECONOMY WHICH BUILDS COMMUNITY

Speech by Eamon Ryan TD at the Green Party Annual Convention March 2018

Royal Marine Hotel Dun Laoghaire

Dun Laoghaire Pier

I remember standing at Dun Laoghaire Pier in the mid eighties, with my parents and siblings. It was like in a scene from a stage Irish play. We were saying farewell to my elder brother as he took the boat to London. Full of tears with folk memories of the dread of migration.

I recall some years later returning from my own travels to the same spot. Taking the train from Bejing to Berlin and hitching from there to Holyhead, singing to myself on the way ‘Homeward Bound’ by Paul Simon. I rejoiced at the very sight of the pier wall as the boat touched home. I took in the smoke, window condensation and chat on top of the 46a, and loved every inch of this town.   

My elder brother and Mother now live either side of the pier. We divide on whether Seapoint or the Forty Foot is the best launching pad to swim out into Dublin Bay. I am glad we are in the Royal Marine for our conference and want to thank Councillor Ossian Smyth for having us here.  

Repeal the 8th

If you go down that pier you might sense other ghosts from times past. The tears that must have been shed over the years as young Irish women took short return journeys on that same boat. Because they did not want to continue with their pregnancy they had to travel and had to do so in shame and alone.

We have a serious decision ahead of us next May as to whether we continue with that tradition.  Do we still want to send Irish women on such journeys? How could we make it stop? I know there are different answers to those questions within our party and we have a tradition of respecting each side of the argument. 

However, we have decided by a clear majority to back a change to our constitution and an amendment to our laws so we give every woman the freedom of choice in this matter. Rather than leaving her at a departure gate we want to support her and manage things within our own shores.

The decision ultimately rests with the Irish people, who are the legislators when it comes to changing our constitution. The wording being put to the people suggests they replace the 8th amendment with a facility for the Oireachtas to legislate on how terminations of pregnancies would be allowed and performed. I trust our political system to do that. I will go to the doors suggesting we vote for repeal while listening with respect to those with a different view.

Upcoming elections

I think we might be back canvassing again, sooner rather than later. It is likely we will have a general election within the next year and certain that local and European elections will take place in May 2019. It is time for us to organise and prepare for that big task. We aim to triple our Oireachtas and Council seats and return again to the European Parliament, where Ciaran Cuffe would be a real asset for our country.

Tip O’Neill was one of the most experienced and skilled political operators and his biography had great canvassing advice. His first message is that you have to go out and ask people directly for their number one vote. You have to earn the honour of being their public representative. Meeting them at their door, listening carefully to what they have to say and then committing to work as hard as you can on their behalf.

Representing your constituents is one of the most honourable part of politics and it is true that all politics is local. However we also need to think global, as we have been doing as a party from the start. You are not looking after your community if you are not keeping an eye to what is happening in the wider world. You serve your people by having a vision of where the country should go from here.

Because we are such a small player on the world stage, we especially need such big thinking in Irish politics. For over fifty years we have relied on international trade, foreign direct investment and co-operation to provide for the needs of our people. That successful strategy is now being threatened by events outside our immediate control. International relations are in a turbulent and uncertain state and we need to think carefully about Ireland’s place in the world.

Thinking Globally

For three decades after the second world war the dominant political narrative in the west was a social democratic one. Government was there to provide services and protect people from the unchecked powers of big business. Forty years ago, for a variety of complex reasons, the conventional wisdom changed to believing the market would deliver what we need and we should reduce our dependence on big Government, which was now seen as a problem. 

Greed was good, money was cheap, software came from the west and manufactured goods from the east, elections were all about the economy and the economy was all about promoting free trade. We were at the end of history and thought leaders in Davos assumed the Western democratic model was about to take hold everywhere. The Celtic Tiger was the white haired boy of this new era. We had never had it so good.

Former Social Democrats became the leading disciples for the new world order. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair promoted their ‘Third way’ which still relied on the free movement of capital to deliver public goods and services. They forgot how unfettered markets have a classic tendency of blowing up speculative bubbles, leaving harsh consequences for ordinary people in their wake. 

This Washington consensus came to a shuddering halt in 2008 with the global banking crash. It exposed the frailties that come with over reliance on market systems and lit up public anger about the loss of incomes and social structures in the rust belt heartlands of former industrial powers.  

Trump and Brexit

Ten years on we are still experiencing the after-shocks from that seismic event. The Trump administration and Brexiters are stoking public anger to pursue their own interests. They are threatening a constitutional crisis in their own countries and provoking a rift with former friends and allies, including ourselves. 

The way we deal with Brexit and Donald Trump is important. Our response should be informed by where we think the world should go from here and not just by trying to maximise our own short term gain. We cannot allow economic nationalism work as a strategy for any country, including our own. Lowering labour, environmental, tax and regulatory standards will only encourage a race to the bottom where everyone loses out. Nationalism is a dead end tale.

We need instead a bigger story which allows us address the great challenges of our time. Our collective future depends on our ability to maximise our economic potential in a way that serves all our people and protects our precious natural resources. 

We ignore the degradation that is happening to our environment at our own peril. We have but one chance to stop runaway climate change taking hold. Taking that chance will help us manage migration safely and avoid resource wars. It will lead the poorest nations out of poverty, while securing our own standard of living. In the transition we can reset ourselves, so our wealth is shared in a more equitable way.

Sustainable development goals

I think the Irish people are ready to play a part in meeting these global challenges. The manifesto to do it was written out in the seventeen sustainable development goals agreed by the United Nations in September 2015. It is a manifesto for the North as well as the South. It brings together social and ecological justice. It acknowledges we all have both rights and responsibilities to uphold.

Going for the goals would make us feel rightly proud. Reaching for them should be the new story for our time. We must strive for a fairer form of globalisation. One built on the back of a new economy which protects our natural home and all the people within it. This story is true to the original meaning of that word. Economics - managing our home.

It seeks a balance between radical and conservative.

It includes both left and right.

It is inspired by science and art.

It is green and technological.

Its time has surely come.

It is an economy which encourages Government and Business to be enterprising together and which invests for the long run.  

It is an economy which is in synch with the smart grids, networked communication systems and other key innovations of our time. 

It is an economy which prioritises primary care and preventative medicine, because it saves us money as well as lives. 

It is an economy which gives our children a truly rounded education, recognising that vocational skills, creativity and physical and mental health are as important as any academic achievement.

It is an economy which is willing to promote basic income in social welfare, because it values unpaid caring work and wants to free people to be enterprising in their own more flexible way.  

Now is the time for Reform

This new sustainable approach is right for Ireland now. We are back to the tiger days as our economy grows seven percent per annum. We now fly direct to Bejing, you hear loads of Chinese spoken on the bus heading from here over to UCD.  Our job in the Dail is to make sure we should not go back to the same boom and bust pattern that divides generations apart. We need to do things differently to avoid such a prospect.

I remember in the height of the financial crash being told of the advice of John Maynard Keynes on how you deal with a banking collapse. He said you have to stabilise the system first and then do reform. We have stabilised our old economy, now is the time for reform.

Unfortunately Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is not thinking this way. He still has a 1990’s world view of where we go from here. He believes markets know best and that Government should have a minimal role in shaping our future. He is inspired by the American dream of individual attainment. He represents those who get up early in the morning and openly questions the motives of those on social welfare. He is bringing us back to the old way where short term economic interests define what we say and do.

He is young and quick and good with words but I for one don’t buy this vision of our future.

I was mortified last week when the Taoiseach praised President Trump for copying our own low Corporate tax policy. I thought we were defending that rate on the basis of the disadvantages we face as a small and peripheral country. I don’t think we should be using it as a justification for Trump’s great tax giveaway.  

It was wrong for the Taoiseach to side immediately with Donald Trump in our planning system. It was wrong in my mind to associate our country so closely with the American dream. I love America but we have our own Irish dream which is just and good and fine enough for us. It includes an American strain but it is not buying into the divided politics that has polluted their dream in recent years. We should stand up and be proud for what we are.

We should show solidarity with the European Union and stand up for better Corporate values. We should play our part in retaining some of the one trillion euro that is lost to Corporate tax avoidance in Europe each year.  We are backing the wrong side in this row and it will come back to haunt us.

Leo stands for the status Quo

Fine Gael has taken such a position because they represent the status quo. They tend to legislate and budget in the interests of the well to do and incumbent big business. They are not short of self confidence and after seven years in Government they are in severe danger of believing their own propaganda. Because they were there from the start they sometimes see the institutions of the state as being their own. They are Conservatives who have forgotten the most important conservation work of all; creating a loving environment where the village not just the individual house raises a child. 

They think they were responsible for rescuing the economy, when in truth their best work was done when they followed the four year plan we wrote back in 2010. Their misdiagnosis of what happened in that crisis risks returning us to the same property bubble that got us into such trouble in the first place. 

What reforms they have done are steering us in the wrong direction. A developer lead approach to housing has seen them lower apartment standards, which will unnecessarily confine people into smaller, darker rooms for life. They adopted a standard revenue raising property tax, rather than introducing a site value tax, which would have brought down the cost of land. They voted against our cost rental motion in the Dail last month, despite so many reports showing it is the way to go. Their housing strategy is not working but they refuse to change.

If your interest in the economy centres around buying distressed mortgages, exporting live cattle or protecting oligarch golf courses, then you know who you have to call. If you have a bigger vision of what the economy could be then it is time you voted green. We know how to build a home for everyone which will not cost the earth.

Our thinking is more in tune with where the best business people are now at. Like them we see corporate social responsibility as being critical for success, not just a tick box exercise. We want a new culture where business serves the community rather than the other way around.

That approach will deliver the best jobs of the future. The one certainty ahead of us in this twenty first century is that every country will be looking for solutions to the environmental crisis that we are all about to face. Our order books will never run dry when we are selling solutions to these problems. It is the business strategy that makes most sense.

Climate Change

Leo Varakdar said on the day of his inauguration as Taoiseach that he would make climate change the first priority for his Government.  He has not followed through on that promise. The Government’s National climate mitigation plan is an unmitigated disaster. They have no real ambition for what we need to do. The other parties and independents are little different. They all pay lip service to the issue but they do not support the scale of change we need to make.

Mnister Naughton is out fighting in Europe to weaken new climate and clean energy legislation. Minister Creed is exporting millions of tonnes of replacement infant formulae, as if it was a great green marketing coup. Minister Ross is more interested in Stepaside Garda station than the gridlock gripping towns and cities around the country. The Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation has said next to nothing about how we might best go green.

The new National Planning Framework provided a great opportunity to set us back on the right path. It started with the best of intentions, to stop sprawl and long distance commutes, to build up our towns and cities, to cut out the carbon and empower local Government to decide how we do all this. Unfortunately the plan was sorely compromised by the time it got to the finishing line. Project Ireland 2040 follows the old development model with a reliance on g motorways and 50% of new housing to come from outside existing urban areas.

A better Project Ireland 2040

The Taoiseach asked us what would we do differently. We take up that challenge with relish. Should we win the seats we aim for at the next election and be in a position to negotiate a new programme for Government, we would look forward to putting our ideas into action.

Project Ireland 2040 should include a national land use plan which sets out how we manage our land from the mountain tops right down to the sea.  The new Common Agriculture Policy could help us make that happen. We need to start paying farmers properly for storing carbon, protecting biodiversity, managing floodwaters , providing access routes as well as producing high quality food.

It is time to slay the myth that the Greens and farmers are on different sides. They are the frontline in the fight against climate change and we are their best hope for higher incomes, and better links with their consumers. We will be their greatest supporters as they become the custodians of our natural world.

A Wild Atlantic Way National Park and Massive Marine Reserve

Our land use plan would include the planting of 20,000 hectares of new forestry each year, four times what we are doing today. Rather than dense coniferous forest, which block out light and isolates communities, we would plant native species and use continuous cover methods so the new forests become part of a massive Wild Atlantic Way National Park. 

Forestry would no longer be about just lumber production but would be a secure store of carbon, a wildlife preserve and a recreational resource for local communities and visitors alike.  The project would create thirty thousand new long term jobs in the surgical management of each forest and would transform our country for the better.

Our ambition should not stop at the shoreline because our territorial waters are ten times larger than our land area. We must manage them in a proper way. We are in the middle of an extinction crisis which has seen half of all invertebrate wildlife disappear over the last fifty years. The great biologist E.O. Wilson has called for 50% of all land and waters to be preserved for nature conservation to stop this ecocide.

We should make that our mission and designate 500,000 square kilometers of Irish territorial waters as Marine Protected areas. We would rigorously monitor those ecosystems to report what is happening in the North Atlantic. It would be an important contribution to climate change research. We could create a new inshore fishing industry where smaller boats take a sustainable catch from the edges of this wildlife reserve.

Vibrant urban streets and greenways

When it comes to looking after our own homes we should target the three billion euro regeneration budget that the Government set aside in Project Ireland 2040 to achieve one specific goal. Rather than allowing it become a slush fund for every local authority project we should use it to restore our traditional urban streets, which are currently dying on their feet.

By taking those old street buildings and wrapping them in warm insulation, putting solar panels on every roof and plugging in high speed broadband, we could make them all become fitting homes for young people and families to move in to.

Living in the centre of towns and cities, their children would have the chance of walking and cycling to the shops and to school. I grew up on such a street and know how wonderful a place it can be. We can rewild our children by giving them a safe space within which to roam. Such an environment shapes character for the better. We can create it by adopting the advice of the OECD and spending 20% of the overall transport budget on active travel modes. Promoting walking and cycling would be our first priority in rescuing our transport system.

In our time in Government at the height of the crisis, we set aside €7.5 million to build the Great Western Greenway to Achill as an example of what could be done. It has since returned that investment tenfold. It has created hundreds of new tourism jobs and improved people’s health and wellbeing by getting them out exercising and connecting with their neighbours. We want every community to have such high quality facilities. By connecting the greenways together we can build a national network that brings tourists here for long holidays and not just mini city breaks. The best future for rural Ireland is going to be green.  

Fine Gael are the Climate laggards

I believe the Irish people are up for this. I had a Pauline conversion in recent months when I heard the Taoiseach declare in the European Parliament that as a nation we were climate laggards. I was initially pleased because I had been saying something similar for the previous year and was glad to see it being acknowledged.

And then I thought about it and realised the truth is slightly different. It is Fine Gael and the other parties who are climate laggards. The Irish people are actually good at doing the right thing.

Ireland is good at being Green

Once given the chance we like to shine.  

We were ahead of the game in getting rid of plastic bags and bringing in smoking bans. 

We are right up there among the leaders when it comes to integrating renewable power. 

We love recycling and home improvement and are into our own operation transformation. 

Munster Joinery make the most energy efficient windows in Kerry and ships them all over the world.

The leading global insulation company Kingspan is based along the Cavan Monaghan border.

 Next door in Louth Glen Dimplex make heat pumps to beat the band and help balance our wind resources. 

The ESB have just won the bid to put in London’s Black Taxi Electric charging infrastructure.

Our food still tastes real and nutritious unlike the corn syrup flavour that has taken over the USA.

We are getting back on our bikes, we are all into hill walking and are brilliant horse people

From 1990 to 2016 industrial production increased 250% & emissions from the sector fell 30%. 

We are near the top of the UN human development index. Our police go unarmed.

We have a free press and fair courts. We have a beautiful green land.

A sustainable economy that builds community

We are ripe as a country to lead out this new sustainable economy that is taking hold across the world. The only thing holding us back is a lack of leadership at the political and administrative level. They are scared to take the leap because they do not realise we have gone beyond a the tipping point where this has become the best economic model.

The solutions we seek - more natural parks - more public transport - more playgrounds - more primary care centres - more smart farming and fishing - more community owned power - more citizen controlled data in an internet of things- more flexible working and more creative learning and more enterprise from both the state and the private sector, are all going to make us a stronger more connected community.  

We need to tell our constituents why we think this is the better economy. 

We need a small army of helpers to knock on doors and share the good news.

We need volunteers ready to go up ladders and put up posters.

We need people to vote for us so we can deliver these solutions in their local town and street.

The New Green Economy is not just our greatest chance of creating a sustainable future for us all.

It’s our only chance.