Irish politics discussion thread

Even when he's arguing for me losing my job, essentially, there's very few I'd have as much faith in as Garret Fitzgerald. Very good piece if anyone' still interested, barely am myself tbh.

THE WHOLE affair of the banks has been a huge distraction from the more fundamental issue of the restoration of our economy to health. A once-off bank bailout of €45-50 billion is, by definition, a lesser problem than a €22 billion annual budget deficit. But this reality has effectively been missed by most people. Now we are finally facing up to this.

Before looking at the deficit problem it is necessary to address the issue of whether more could be done by the Government to revive the economy by “creating” employment, as the unions demand. Some major countries have attempted to do this – although what success they have had is not yet clear.

In our case there are two difficulties about such an approach. First, we are one of the most open economies in the world. We import three-quarters of what we need – such imports represent less than one-third of output in the UK, France and Italy – and a mere one-sixth in the case of the US. In our case the leakage from any stimulus measure would be several times greater than in those other countries. Their economies rather than ours would be the main beneficiaries of an Irish stimulus measure, no matter how finely it was targeted. And we can’t afford to help save the world just now!

Second, our financial shortfall is much more severe than that of the countries that have tried to stimulate growth. This year our revenue is falling short of our expenditure by no less than 38 per cent. So, we have far less leeway for stimulatory measures.

Taken together, these harsh facts suggest we may be one of the worst cases for such action – perhaps the very worst – in the entire developed world.

focus rightly across the pond today, but Vincent Browne of all people gives some food for thought today

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/1020/1224281544198.html

yah i read about this last night. shocked 2 b shocked ugh

the 11 bn, sortof out of the loop etc

Could have an election now and over with and a new govt in place before we have to go back to the markets to raise money (3-4 months iirc). Political mandate and stability somewhat assured, at least, which should, theoretically, help us when the time comes to go begging again.

That FG & Lab aren't doing more to push an election means they either don't have the appetite to do the hard work, or don't trust the electorate not to blame them for the damage they'll have to do to clean up.

Don't blame them on the second point, to be honest.

This might cheer up some exiles:

http://img.rasset.ie/0003dcc2-440.jpg

Many Harney attacked with paint while opening a Health Centre in Cherry Orchard.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/1102/1224282482641.html

so Irish friends, what do you all think about this? I've been reading Fintan's stuff a lot lately and like, while I can defo see how Nama was the subject of serious reservations at the time, isn't some of the vindictiveness about what the gov did during the Celtic Tiger years a bit due to hindsight? like i'm not defending the politicians (and yeah, they should take a paycut), just I lived in Ireland during those years and I don't remember any national debate about how we were setting ourselves up for disaster or whatever. There were a lot of vague rumblings but it was never something discussed at length to my mind.

anyone remember what o'toole was saying back then? cos i don't recall him talking economics much at all at that time. i know mcwilliams predicted a lot of what has happened but nobody actually predicted it with any urgency, did they? like surely if you really knew this was on the cards, if you really knew "we are going to be FUCKED" and you had any influence whatsoever you would make it clear that was what you thought?

feel free to school me here btw...I'm out of Ireland so I don't have anything like the full background here, I'm just trying to gauge how the totally blasé attitude of the boom years tallies with the anger at what was done during those years...

fair points.

There's a ucd professor, flipped if i can remember his name, maybe morgan? He's been doom mongerin for a while, and catigated pretty hravily for it.

I'm not really a 'blame the media' type tbh, but frankly anyone who didnt think it would last decade and then finish softly ith us all cherry millionaires was always portrayed as a crank. There wss never a far-seeing debate, any negative reporting/issues were almost exclusively short term in nature. The issues of long-term economic policy never arose.

You also have to remember just how dismissively anyone talking the economy down was treated by bertie/ff, and the press happily followed suit.

There's always joe higgins!

txtin from my phone btw

You also have to remember just how dismissively anyone talking the economy down was treated by bertie/ff, and the press happily followed suit.

and the people wanted bertie etc to be right, for everyone to be loaded forever. i guess what i'm getting at is, did our govt do things other govts wouldn't have? like were they outstandingly incompetent?

also i mean hasn't o'toole like released two books on this now? not saying he's trying to earn money but like, only a nominal amount of praise deserved for lambasting the govt when the entire country is lambasting them.

yes, though tbh incompetent does them both too much and too little credit. I would say they were very aware of how long they could milk it, and how to futureproof themselves from blame/consequences.

Prof morgan kelly btw- certainly called bank guarantee and nama pretty well.

Michael mcdowell's brother ?moore? Has always been a serious and authoritative voice on long term matters when i hear him, tho it's fair to say i dont always agree with him.

Another thought- bertie ws astonishingly good at getting 'buyin' from all areas- eradicating the usual conflicts btwn unions/employers for instance, bought short term peace economically, but left us with weak & lazy unions who were basically establishment themselves. When everyone was getting payrises, sure who was going to kick up a fuss for regulation, competitiveness, etc?

yes otoole is a bandwagon jumper, not a prophet, but he writes with good clarity and the right amount of anger imo. Better late than never.

i guess what i'm getting at is, did our govt do things other govts wouldn't have? like were they outstandingly incompetent?

A lot of people said in the years since the dotcom bust that the public finances had become worryingly dependent on transaction taxes related to property and on taxes relating to the construction sector generally. These people said that if there was any fall off in construction or a correction in the property market then the public finances would be in serious trouble. The Government seesm to have ignored these people. Is this what you would consider incompetent?

'these people' would have been known as 'experts who are not direct beneficiaries' in other countries, imo.

one thins that we haven't fixed or even begun to address is the ease with which the issues, and i mean the really big issues, become clogged or clouded in public debate. tribunals, the dáil, police investigations, there's never any clear outcomes, nobody in ever in a position to give a straight answer, it's always oddering aul mary tanaiste left holding the boring even herself with 'he's not in today, sorry' or 'i don't have that information to hand'.

i don't even work in the model of diligence and efficiency that is the irish private sector, but my first performance at a meeting that mirrored the typical govt minister's showing to the dáil would see me up to my neck in shite. but there's never any issue around this.

i feel that bertie made this a prevalent mode of avoidance, but that may only be because i didn't directly experience haughey nor his forebears in action. too subtle a tactic for charlie, perhaps.

fintan o'toole very good on last word, although good ideas on how things should be run if we could start from scratch is maybe the equivalent of marking helen keller in the hurling final.

free

fucking

cheese

quick meechawl, point me twards rosslare and i'll be off sure

wtf is this

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/irish-to-get-free-christmas-cheese-2126721.html

that's ~12g per capita afaict

what will u do with that?

treat it with cáis-ion i reckon

6bn fiscal adjustment next year, and they claim they wont be hitting public sector wages. they will, of course, but not til they get the budget through safely. re-negotiation of croke park agreement before march i think. not a bad thing, from a non-personal perspective. but without tax increases across the board, prob will cause havoc with unions/IR disruption.

Budget won't get through. I'd nearly put my house - negative equity and all - on it.

double or quits kinda thing?

ff are too well versed in the arcane art of the political promissory note to not get this one through.

if lenihan were a well man, i'd anticipate a speculative failure followed by a heave, but they'll put all their eggs in cowen's basket until forced to stop. martin vs lenihan in new year, maybe after public strikes hit.

Maybe..

Given that the only thing that maintains order in FF is the ability of the party badge to get the wo/man whose natural station is Town Councillor elected to the Dail, the fact that it is now a liability means the likelihood of said chancer discovering a conscience - read 'pretext' - and voting against cuts in Welfare/ pensions/ upping college fees in order to give themselves a head start in the battle for the one possible FF seat in a constituency where they could normally depend on two, seems to me to be approaching 100%.

oh yeah, self-interest will kick in at some stage, but really the individuals in FF are so unlikely to get in at any level in coming elections means that, for now, better to hold on to diminishing power together and try to bluff with 'hard choices for the country' line- maybe there's truth in that line, but given the track record of most of these ppl it's coincidental rather than conscience.

could be biased here given my local ff tds- calleary (idiot, party man) flynn (corrupt, party woman (even when not in the party))

flynn as a local td...jesus. i'm not even sure who the ones where i grew up are now since gv wright drove his car into a person

he drove his own car? small time motherfucker imo

Speaking at the launch of the “Reinventing Government” document in the Morrison Hotel, Dublin, Mr Kenny and enterprise spokesman Richard Bruton said fundamental change was needed to ensure State services are protected and the economy is put back on track.

“The public sector has a key role to play in rebuilding Ireland. We believe that the vast majority of public servants do an absolutely vital job and recognise that many public servants feel they are being unfairly targeted as a result of a crisis they did not create," Mr Kenny said.

Among the actions that Fine Gael is pledging is the abolition of more than 145 State bodies and companies including the dismantling of the HSE and Fás and their replacement with more cost effective alternatives; the saving of €5 billion through tackling waste, duplication and inefficiency

gobshite man speak with forked tongue imo

Just in case any of you were still clinging to a few tattered shreds of hope:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/1108/1224282865400.html?via=mr

Kelly was right about the property crash when all around were predicting 'soft landings' - I fear that this unwaveringly grim prognosis may be similarly accurate.

God that article is enough to make you want to cry. Is there a mass exodus yet?

People are leaving certainly, and recent immigrants are returning home in some numbers, but the safety valve really isn't there to the extent it was in the '80s. Where can you go?

A lot of people have moved over here (London), but I think it's stopped a bit as far as my experience is worth anything. There seemed to be a big spike of people moving a year or so ago, but now maybe whoever is still in Dublin that I know is staying.

There are jobs in somewhere like London, for definite, but I'd hate to be just out of college or something, unthinkable.

^^^^

And worse if you're just off a building site, and that's all you've done since you were 16.

The cheese thing is just killing me. Somebody told me this weekend that it was literally every Irish citizen that would receive their free piece but that appears to be somewhat exxagerated.

the cheese thing - they distribute free cheese every year to the po', but only this year did they decide to shite on about it in what proved to be a counterproductive manner.

It's so quintessentially Irish. The country is fucked but never let it be said you can't have a nice melty cheese sandwich...

canada, australia, btw.

My dad feels things are begnning to look up in the states too.

yeah loads of people i know are in australia. less in canada but heard a bit of that on the rise of late...

yeah. Know people that are gone both ways, depending on how things go here at my next contract renewal it could be a ting.

The ravers of the early 1990s are the parents, managers, editors, largely responsible adults who will spend the next decade or two at the coalface of a recession.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2010/1108/1224282859372_pf.html

two decades!

we're so fucked i'm kinda high thinking about it

tbh i only think this is all funny now

― plax (ico), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 12:54 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

tbh it's funny now.

tbh it's not going to be when the crash comes, and we get to look back on this last decade like americans in the 1930-40's looked on wall street in the 1920's

― DarraghmacKwacz (darraghmac), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 12:55 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the crash comes?

― nakhchivan, Wednesday, March 24, 2010 12:56 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

when the crash comes.

― DarraghmacKwacz (darraghmac), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 12:56 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

do people in ireland expect it to get drastically worse than it already is?

― nakhchivan, Wednesday, March 24, 2010 1:02 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

tbh relatively ireland aint that bad, yet, its not the 80s or even the early 90s but i mean

― plax (ico), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 1:04 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think it'll get iceland in september or so.

― DarraghmacKwacz (darraghmac), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 1:05 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

jesus

― nakhchivan, Wednesday, March 24, 2010 1:06 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

there's still a huge amount of property overvaluation propping up the banks. foreclosures haven't started with gusto yet, but they will before long. the govt were criticised about predicting a 'soft landing' for the housing market instead of a crash in early 2008. that criticism was wrong- we're in the middle of our soft landing.

― DarraghmacKwacz (darraghmac), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 1:07 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark

tbf, i was wrong- it is funny

may those german bankers be clement with you all

don't even know what to think about it...thought i wasn't patriotic but our country in the absolute shitter makes me feel sad.

true irish patriotism isnt sadness, it's pugnacious denial and eventual violence

well let me rephrase to "thought i didn't give a toss about our country either way"