New Year Resolutions

It is the time of the year when we in common with many draw up our New Year resolutions with undiluted sincerity only for most of them to dissolve in no time at all – victims to the capacity of reality to suppress optimism.

So instead, we took a less painful method of self – correction and substituted wishes for resolutions, thereby letting fate control matters and allowing our conscience a brief respite.

Our three wishes are for dear old Ireland and its people, and not just selfish demands for our own personal dreams and desires although the two may indeed merge along the way.

Our first wish is that the Cead Mile Failte, the friendly genuine Irish welcome to visitors for which Ireland used to famous returns because it has gone away, you know. Figures just released from Tourism Ireland indicate that a record 4 million tourists came to these shores last year, despite the Heavens inflicting on the country the worst summer on record. Of this figure, over 1 million were Americans on an Ireland vacation, who are used to the “Have a nice day routine” as part and parcel of their service sector. Sadly in recent years the myth that this island was Ireland of the Welcomes proved to be just that - a myth - to go along with the many myths that Irish folklore presents us with.

In hotels, pubs, restaurants, shops and tourist attractions there seems to an ingrained surliness displayed by staff serving the public. It is almost as though the roles are reversed and that the customer is a nuisance to be ignored, or served with barely a civil word. It doesn’t help that a lot of assistants behind counters are not Irish and may have a poor grasp of English. It is, however, no excuse. They have employers who should instruct them in good manners and monitor their behaviour when serving customers. It is not as though the fault alone lies with our immigrant workers – our homegrown variety are a lot worse and are an example of one of the many undesirable legacies of the Celtic Tiger era.

Our second wish for 2008 is the impossible dream and we will not dwell long on the subject for we at Look Around Ireland are liable to get so worked up about it that we could become an unwitting victim of this beast. We are referring, of course, to the HSE, who purport to run our third world, so called health service. Please, for the love of God, do something to improve the calamitous situation. We are a country of only 4 million people. How difficult can it be to hire the best outsourced health management experts to be appointed with a brief to reform and make efficient this monster over which nobody seems to be able to exert control? Staff numbers in the HSE have risen from 81,000 in 2000 to over 106,000 in 2006 and yet the service gets worse. Bring in a multi-national chief executive familiar with overseeing such numbers of employees, and put him to work, free of political and union encumbrances that seem to stifle the system.

Make at least a start in 2008 – please!

Our third wish is one which applies to anybody who is a commuter/traveler in any shape or form, so therefore it applies to practically everybody – please grant us decent infrastructure so that we can get on with our lives in some sort of ordered fashion.

I think of the motorist, the train and bus commuter, the cyclists, the airline travelers etc. etc who are all victims of the worst infrastructure in the western world. The trains are definitely from the Iron Age as is the attitude and vision of the people running them. Dublin Airport is a well documented disaster. The few kilometers of motorways that we have are car parks with lots of toll booths, and no toilets or service areas. The Dublin Port Tunnel is too low for many of the trucks it was supposedly designed to cater for. The farcical and ultra- costly Luas lines don’t meet. The list goes on and on!

In Ireland it appears to be that the mandarins in power are only possessed of the ability to be reactive instead of proactive. Everything is done as an afterthought. They bolt the stable door in Dublin when the horse has reached Cork. The inadequacies of these people in charge, the grey, faceless public service suits, make life hell for all the people and businesses of this country. Do not underestimate the damage that it is doing to the social and economic fabric of life throughout this land – you only have to be dimly observant to note that family planning is now done on the basis of ones commuter time!

The levels of sheer stress experienced by the Irish commuter, traveler, delivery person, businessperson is a rumbling furnace about to burst! Please get your act together and make it happen, we say to those who are in charge but who deny responsibility.

An outlandish wish, we know!

So there you have my New Year wishes. It would be nice if those in charge treated them as resolutions, but I guess that is just wishing for the impossible.

Have a happy New Year