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PATHOLOGICAL OPTIMISM?

Published in Issue 6 (November/December 2022), Letters, Volume 30

Sir,—It is only with reluctance that one criticises the product of an optimistic perspective. The positive and optimistic bring hope, and with hope comes enthusiasm, leading to progress. However, the piece on economic and social progress for the first 100 years of independent Ireland, ‘A people’s progress’ (HI 30.3, May/June 2022, Platform) by Mark Henry, is drunk on optimism to the point of pathological delusion.

There is a great deal of emphasis on graphs and statistics. Did the author never hear of Mark Twain’s dictum, ‘There are lies, damned lies and statistics’?

As statistics are fed to the reader, using striking and colourful graphs but without proper explanatory context, superficial impressions are made to appear to be significant insights. A major case in point is the comparison of Irish GDP (Gross Domestic Product per capita) changes over time with those of the UK and US.

A graph shows how GDP per capita for Ireland surpassed the UK in 1997 and the US in 2015. The author acknowledges ‘the shortcomings of GDP calculations that include the earnings of multinational corporations’, but he does not explain these shortcomings. The reality is that the economically literate understand Irish GDP figures as a statistical mirage created by the accounting procedures of multinational firms. The more profit is ascribed to subsidiaries in Ireland, the less tax is payable overall. It is a financial smoke and mirrors game. Thus GDP markedly exaggerates the true standard of living in Ireland.

He refers to how ‘… our service exports now well exceed those of our manufactured goods’, omitting the fact that many of these ‘service exports’ are another mirage created by the elaborate accounting practices of multinationals. (This has been explained by the financial commentator Michael Hennigan, who presents his views on the FinFacts website.)

And so the author goes on: ‘The United Nations rates our quality of life as the second-highest on the planet’. Again, how could the UN make such a calculation for disparate assorted countries except by slotting headline national statistics into a standard algorithm (mathematical formula)? Given, as seen above, that national economic statistics for Ireland, especially GDP, exaggerate reality, we would expect a high placing on any UN ‘quality of life’ index.—Yours etc.,

TIM O’SULLIVAN
Dublin 9

On this Day

May 08

1567 Shane O’Neill of Tyrone was heavily defeated by Hugh O’Donnell at the Battle of Farsetmore, near Letterkenny, Co. Donegal.
1916 Éamonn Ceannt (34), Michael Mallin (36), Con Colbert (25) and Seán Heuston (25) executed.
1987At Loughgall, Co. Armagh, an eight-man IRA unit, about to attack the local RUC station, was wiped out by a 36-man SAS unit. It was the IRA’s greatest single loss of life in the recent Troubles. A passing civilian was also killed.
2007 Devolution day in Northern Ireland. Ian Paisley (DUP) and Martin McGuinness (SF) were sworn in as first minister and deputy first minister of the Northern Ireland executive.
2007‘Devolution Day’ in Northern Ireland. DUP leader Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness (SF) took office as first minister and deputy first minister respectively in a restored Northern Ireland Assembly.
1987 The Loughgall ambush. Eight members of the East Tyrone Brigade of the IRA, including their commander, Patrick Joseph Kelly, were killed by the SAS/RUC as they attacked the part-manned RUC station in north Armagh. The East Tyrone Brigade was one of the most active and successful IRA brigades during the Troubles, with a simple strategy to create and expand ‘no-go zones’ which the RUC/British Army did not control, in the course of which they had carried out 22 attacks over the previous six months, killing seven members of the security forces. Meanwhile, Det. Chief Supt. Francis Murray—a Catholic from the Ards Peninsula, based in Portadown, who had played hurling in his youth—was determined to do his duty. Ten years earlier, whilst investigating a booby-trapped IRA arms dump in Lurgan he lost a hand, a leg and an eye, which sidelined him for three years. Returning to duty, he spent most of his time scrutinising intelligence reports until he eventually made a breakthrough; in a monitored telephone call an IRA Volunteer indiscreetly told his girlfriend about the plan for Loughgall. With permission to deploy a group of SAS personnel and RUC marksmen, he briefed them in detail—from his knowledge of previous attacks—on the IRA modus operandi before they took up positions at the station. As predicted, the IRA arrived with a stolen mechanical digger with a 200lb bomb in the bucket, which destroyed much of the base. Then, as they proceeded to their getaway van, they were mown down in a hail of 1,200 rounds, though six did manage to escape. The ambush, however, had no long-term effect on the East Tyrone Brigade, which lost 53 Volunteers during the Troubles, mostly at the hands of the SAS and UVF. Chief Supt. Murray was awarded an MBE and the Queen’s Police Medal and retired after a 32-year police career. Twenty years to the day of the ambush, Sinn Féin went into a devolved government with the DUP in Stormont.

PATHOLOGICAL OPTIMISM?

Personal Histories

On this Day

May 08