People are right to praise Lenihan's Budget as a brave attempt to arrest the freefalling fiscal crisis, but I'm surprised they didn't mention how Lenihan sold the pass on public service pensioners.
There is little point in tackling the structural deficit without including these people, many of whom 'retired' in their 40s or early 50s on incredibly generous pensions, only to start second careers. These are not little old ladies sparing the coal!
The fact that Lenihan has made radical changes to the pension rules for new entrants to the public service is an implied admission that the previous rules were nothing but a sham. If I recall the figures correctly, Ireland is facing a public sector pension bill of some €100 billion by 2030. That is not only unsustainable, it is a scandalous imposition on our future workers, thanks to the uncosted and fraudulent populism of a series of dreadful governments in our recent past. Worse still, is the well-founded impression that public service pensions were spared only because retired ministers and politicians would be caught as well.
Talleyrand could have been referring to the Dail when he said of the Bourbons, "They have forgotten nothing, and learned nothing." What a pity our politicians have once again added their usual dollop of cynicism to a vital measure of national policy.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Quangos - Anybody Got a Match?
Now that the dust is settling on the Budget we are beginning to see some of its gaping holes, despite all the good work done by Brian Lenihan in stabilising our precarious situation. And of all these holes, none is bigger than the complete absence of any mention of quangos.
The so-called 'bonfire of the quangos' has been promised from the moment the credit crunch really hit home, with those of us who had always chafed at the massive waste of public money that these unelected and unaccountable bodies represented, now being joined by most reasonable people.
With the attention of the public suddenly focused on this massive diversion of taxpayers' funds, the Government seemed to realise the game was up on their little racket, and quickly started making noises about doing away with the multitude of quangos created under Bertie Ahern's plan to buy everyone and everything in sight with our money.
However, a year later one could be forgiven for thinking every quango had been done away with, and the billions squandered on them had all been recouped, if Lenihan's speech was anything to go by. But no, the 800 (a guess) or so quangos are still merrily spending money like it's going out of fashion, and countless 'chief executives', 'directors', and 'chairpersons' are still occupying their expensive office suites around the country and issuing spending directives and press releases as if they were Eva Peron.
But of course, we were all being a bit naive if we believed any politician would willingly relinquish his right to nominate certain well-connected people to a public body that had been specially dreamt up just for them. Especially when it was all being done at the taxpayers' expense. Don't we all remember how Bertie Ahern appointed his ex-girlfriend to the Consumer Agency, even though she had precisely zero experience in any of the issues she would be sitting in judgement on? But nobody cared. The important thing was that politicians had found the most wonderful little scam whereby they could lash out political patronage to their willing stooges, while bribing potential enemies, all at our expense. But what's a €200,000 salary between friends, even if we did have to hand it out thousands of times between quango bosses, managers, board members and staff.
Now that we are beginning to see that the most inexcusable part of the public sector is the one that has remained untouched, there is more than a little bafflement. Lenihan has a big enough battle on his hands with justifying cuts to pay and benefits for people on the edge of the financial abyss, so you can only admire his weird determination to fight to the last ditch to keep the apparatchiks and comrades in the Equality Authority at their expensive desks.
Maybe the Government knows more than they're saying, and they have a big surprise in store for us. Or more likely, all those in the inner circle who were so carefully featherbedded in their quangos by the politicians, know where the bodies are buried, and have made themselves "untouchable".
The so-called 'bonfire of the quangos' has been promised from the moment the credit crunch really hit home, with those of us who had always chafed at the massive waste of public money that these unelected and unaccountable bodies represented, now being joined by most reasonable people.
With the attention of the public suddenly focused on this massive diversion of taxpayers' funds, the Government seemed to realise the game was up on their little racket, and quickly started making noises about doing away with the multitude of quangos created under Bertie Ahern's plan to buy everyone and everything in sight with our money.
However, a year later one could be forgiven for thinking every quango had been done away with, and the billions squandered on them had all been recouped, if Lenihan's speech was anything to go by. But no, the 800 (a guess) or so quangos are still merrily spending money like it's going out of fashion, and countless 'chief executives', 'directors', and 'chairpersons' are still occupying their expensive office suites around the country and issuing spending directives and press releases as if they were Eva Peron.
But of course, we were all being a bit naive if we believed any politician would willingly relinquish his right to nominate certain well-connected people to a public body that had been specially dreamt up just for them. Especially when it was all being done at the taxpayers' expense. Don't we all remember how Bertie Ahern appointed his ex-girlfriend to the Consumer Agency, even though she had precisely zero experience in any of the issues she would be sitting in judgement on? But nobody cared. The important thing was that politicians had found the most wonderful little scam whereby they could lash out political patronage to their willing stooges, while bribing potential enemies, all at our expense. But what's a €200,000 salary between friends, even if we did have to hand it out thousands of times between quango bosses, managers, board members and staff.
Now that we are beginning to see that the most inexcusable part of the public sector is the one that has remained untouched, there is more than a little bafflement. Lenihan has a big enough battle on his hands with justifying cuts to pay and benefits for people on the edge of the financial abyss, so you can only admire his weird determination to fight to the last ditch to keep the apparatchiks and comrades in the Equality Authority at their expensive desks.
Maybe the Government knows more than they're saying, and they have a big surprise in store for us. Or more likely, all those in the inner circle who were so carefully featherbedded in their quangos by the politicians, know where the bodies are buried, and have made themselves "untouchable".
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Root and Branch Reform
With Brian Lenihan doing the bare minimum necessary to stop the country falling into bankruptcy, this well-flagged Budget contained no surprises. Although the usual crescendo of groans predictably rose from those who always felt they had some sort of superior claim on the national income.
What came as a surprise to most people, I think, was the bizarre announcement by the Garda Representative Association (GRA) prior to the Budget, that the breakdown of the social partnership talks would be the signal for them to ballot their members on strike action.
That an organisation representing the bulk of the national police force should believe it is perfectly acceptable to contemplate withdrawing their presence from the streets, almost beggars belief. Justice Minister Dermot Ahern was right on the money when he described the plans as "an affront to democracy". Not even in the dark days of the Civil War or its Blueshirt aftermath, did the Garda ever consider such a mutiny to be conceivable.
The question is, what has changed in our society that such blatant lawbreaking by the police is something they themselves take for granted? Could it be that decades of pandering by our politicians to every interest group has now conditioned those groups to believe their every demand must be satisfied, no matter how outlandish?
From an objective viewpoint, the guards have little to complain about. With an average wage of over €1,300 per week, and an array of expenses and other perks, they are at or near the top of the public service tree - especially compared to the soldiers who often back them up in operations, who would be glad to earn half that amount. Nevertheless, they genuinely seem to believe that they are hard done by, even though some of their complaints over the last year would make a schoolchild blush.
Not for them adherence to the dictum so memorably summed up by President Calvin Coolidge of the USA, when Governor of Massachusetts during the Boston Police Strike of 1919: "There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time."
If it wasn't indelicate to suggest it, I might believe their bellyaching had more to do with the fact that gardai were among the most enthusiastic of the 'buy-to-let' brigade during the property bubble - ably aided and abetted by banks who were only too glad to lend to these princes and princesses of the public sector, job-for-life set. Indeed, I know guards who openly boasted to me of their houses, apartments and ski-chalets in Bulgaria, and how they travel out there frequently to enjoy "the cheap drink".
I hate to say it, but it looks as if the public safety is now under threat because our police have been living it large and don't want to pick up the bill for their lifestyle choices. And I guess that goes for all the others who were considered a 'great risk' by the lending institutions, but who are now in negative equity and are looking for someone else to carry the can.
This is what happens when spineless populists pump-prime the part of the economy over which they have control for years on end, acting like Santa Claus to the people employed in that sector, and then invite national havoc when they are forced to take away the whisky bottle from those people.
We can't afford to put the country through this gross mismanagement again. It's hard to see the republic surviving another dose of this criminal incompetence. In the name of God, reform the system from the top down, and ensure that the people who run this country and control its financial health are held accountable for their decisions from now on. It is the very least we must do.
What came as a surprise to most people, I think, was the bizarre announcement by the Garda Representative Association (GRA) prior to the Budget, that the breakdown of the social partnership talks would be the signal for them to ballot their members on strike action.
That an organisation representing the bulk of the national police force should believe it is perfectly acceptable to contemplate withdrawing their presence from the streets, almost beggars belief. Justice Minister Dermot Ahern was right on the money when he described the plans as "an affront to democracy". Not even in the dark days of the Civil War or its Blueshirt aftermath, did the Garda ever consider such a mutiny to be conceivable.
The question is, what has changed in our society that such blatant lawbreaking by the police is something they themselves take for granted? Could it be that decades of pandering by our politicians to every interest group has now conditioned those groups to believe their every demand must be satisfied, no matter how outlandish?
From an objective viewpoint, the guards have little to complain about. With an average wage of over €1,300 per week, and an array of expenses and other perks, they are at or near the top of the public service tree - especially compared to the soldiers who often back them up in operations, who would be glad to earn half that amount. Nevertheless, they genuinely seem to believe that they are hard done by, even though some of their complaints over the last year would make a schoolchild blush.
Not for them adherence to the dictum so memorably summed up by President Calvin Coolidge of the USA, when Governor of Massachusetts during the Boston Police Strike of 1919: "There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time."
If it wasn't indelicate to suggest it, I might believe their bellyaching had more to do with the fact that gardai were among the most enthusiastic of the 'buy-to-let' brigade during the property bubble - ably aided and abetted by banks who were only too glad to lend to these princes and princesses of the public sector, job-for-life set. Indeed, I know guards who openly boasted to me of their houses, apartments and ski-chalets in Bulgaria, and how they travel out there frequently to enjoy "the cheap drink".
I hate to say it, but it looks as if the public safety is now under threat because our police have been living it large and don't want to pick up the bill for their lifestyle choices. And I guess that goes for all the others who were considered a 'great risk' by the lending institutions, but who are now in negative equity and are looking for someone else to carry the can.
This is what happens when spineless populists pump-prime the part of the economy over which they have control for years on end, acting like Santa Claus to the people employed in that sector, and then invite national havoc when they are forced to take away the whisky bottle from those people.
We can't afford to put the country through this gross mismanagement again. It's hard to see the republic surviving another dose of this criminal incompetence. In the name of God, reform the system from the top down, and ensure that the people who run this country and control its financial health are held accountable for their decisions from now on. It is the very least we must do.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Unions Still Courted by Cowen
The Budget is bearing down on us with all deliberate speed while we and the markets are waiting. Only time will tell if acting-Taoiseach Brian Lenihan will have the cojones to do the needful and take an axe to the public sector spending bill. But at this stage it looks like he doesn't have a choice anyway.
The only sliver of doubt for those of us who want to see Ireland back on the path to recovery, is the continued courting of the "social partners" by the Cowen regime. This is now beyond a joke. We could understand a certain danse macabre quality to Cowen's previous flirtings with the unions et al, when he was trying to win both the Lisbon Treaty referendum and the Green Party's support for NAMA - no point coming over like Clint Eastwood when they've all got your unmentionables in their grip - but this continuing pretence that things are still like the good old days under Bertie, when the unions were ushered in to Kildare St to give their orders to the Government, is just pathetic.
If Lenihan can ram the necessary budget provisions down the neck of his lily-livered backbenchers, and keep national disgraces like Michael Lowry onside, then perhaps he should go the whole hog and take out Cowen as well. Not a solitary TD would stand in his way, and he would finally have a mandate to do what has to be done. Commentators say he would have to go for an election. But this is not necessary so long as he has the support of the Dail and the President - that's the law and that's all that matters.
The only sliver of doubt for those of us who want to see Ireland back on the path to recovery, is the continued courting of the "social partners" by the Cowen regime. This is now beyond a joke. We could understand a certain danse macabre quality to Cowen's previous flirtings with the unions et al, when he was trying to win both the Lisbon Treaty referendum and the Green Party's support for NAMA - no point coming over like Clint Eastwood when they've all got your unmentionables in their grip - but this continuing pretence that things are still like the good old days under Bertie, when the unions were ushered in to Kildare St to give their orders to the Government, is just pathetic.
If Lenihan can ram the necessary budget provisions down the neck of his lily-livered backbenchers, and keep national disgraces like Michael Lowry onside, then perhaps he should go the whole hog and take out Cowen as well. Not a solitary TD would stand in his way, and he would finally have a mandate to do what has to be done. Commentators say he would have to go for an election. But this is not necessary so long as he has the support of the Dail and the President - that's the law and that's all that matters.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Stop Press - Government Makes a Decision
Well stone the crows! The Irish Government has actually started acting like they're running the place! That's if you believe they will do as they say and stick to their plan to cut public sector wages by 7%.
Nevertheless, this is a good sign. For two years now, the Cowen regime has been catatonic while the economy plunged to historic lows, despite the exasperated goading of most of the press and, indeed, our European partners.
It now seems the major problem was Fianna Fail's coalition difficulties with the leftist Greens, combined with the sensitivities in getting the Lisbon Treaty passed the second time around.
However, the public sector unions are gearing up for the mother of a fight in order to protect their superior position in comparison to the rest of the Irish workforce. So be it, say the vast majority of us. But clearly they believe Fianna Fail is on the point of collapse, and with the possible exception of the Finance Minister, haven't the stomach for a fight that has no upside for them.
Obviously, the very survival of the Republic as an autonomous economy is of little interest to the politicians or the vested interests. That is unfortunate. But, to paraphrase George W Bush, if this sucka goes down, they all go down with it. That is probably why our 'leaders' will fall into line with the little people in the end, and go along with the long-postponed austerity measures our crisis demands. Although it's probably going to be a very rocky and miserable time in the interval, as all the people who can wreck the economy will be tempted to do as much damage as they can in a sort of 'primal scream' against the loss of money and more importantly, status.
Let's get on with this Budget and in the meantime pray that someone in the government has the backbone to do the right thing, no matter what the intimidation may entail.
Nevertheless, this is a good sign. For two years now, the Cowen regime has been catatonic while the economy plunged to historic lows, despite the exasperated goading of most of the press and, indeed, our European partners.
It now seems the major problem was Fianna Fail's coalition difficulties with the leftist Greens, combined with the sensitivities in getting the Lisbon Treaty passed the second time around.
However, the public sector unions are gearing up for the mother of a fight in order to protect their superior position in comparison to the rest of the Irish workforce. So be it, say the vast majority of us. But clearly they believe Fianna Fail is on the point of collapse, and with the possible exception of the Finance Minister, haven't the stomach for a fight that has no upside for them.
Obviously, the very survival of the Republic as an autonomous economy is of little interest to the politicians or the vested interests. That is unfortunate. But, to paraphrase George W Bush, if this sucka goes down, they all go down with it. That is probably why our 'leaders' will fall into line with the little people in the end, and go along with the long-postponed austerity measures our crisis demands. Although it's probably going to be a very rocky and miserable time in the interval, as all the people who can wreck the economy will be tempted to do as much damage as they can in a sort of 'primal scream' against the loss of money and more importantly, status.
Let's get on with this Budget and in the meantime pray that someone in the government has the backbone to do the right thing, no matter what the intimidation may entail.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Momentum Builds for Reform
I guess one is basically "conflicted" as the yanks put it, when you agree entirely with the sentiments of a political leader but deplore their motives. That's exactly the way irishtaxpayer feels about the latest weird pronouncements of Enda Kenny, the esteemed leader of the post-fascist Blueshirts we grace with the title 'official opposition'.
With a conversion worthy of Saul on the road to Damascus, Kenny revealed to a pig-sick collection of party worthies that he wanted to abolish Seanad Eireann.
Most of the fat-cat bloodsuckers in the audience that night must have been choking on their foie gras, as the Seanad, or waiting room for failures as the rest of us know it, is a key part of the system that props up the worst people in politics and delivers them back to us at every election.
Kenny is either being extremely brave to take on the vested interest that is Fine Gael, or else he has truly taken leave of his senses after the shock of being made to look like an uberwimp by Eamon Gilmore during the dispatch of John O'Donoghue.
But the truth, of course, is that Enda Kenny is now as much of a slave to his PR people as Brian Cowen is to his civil servants and the unions. Which explains the desperate attempt to suddenly surf the zeitgeist by leaping onto the bandwagon before it finally disappears over the hill.
The only bright spot in this sorry affair is the reference by Kenny to a list system as part of his proposed new broom. Although he probably sees this as just a new way to use patronage, it could be a brilliant way of bringing real talent into the stagnant pool of the Oireachtas. God knows, even one outsider from the world of business or science would increase the general IQ level in the Dail by a factor of ten!
The last great hope of reformers - the Greens - sold out to FF in the Programme for Government when they kicked reform into the long grass by settling for an electoral commission, whose final report can be safely ignored until the election is out of the way.
At least with FG now making such a bold grab for the people's vote, it will be next to impossible for any of the parties to bury reform from now on. Nevertheless, poor Enda has probably bought his ticket out of the party leadership with his talk of abolishing one of the carriages on the gravy train. The lazy good-for-nothings in his party will see to that.
The bottom line is that this movement for reform of our political institutions is too important to be left to self-interested politicians. They are cowering in their bunkers hoping we will go away. It's up to us to keep the pressure on until we have a system that is fit for purpose.
With a conversion worthy of Saul on the road to Damascus, Kenny revealed to a pig-sick collection of party worthies that he wanted to abolish Seanad Eireann.
Most of the fat-cat bloodsuckers in the audience that night must have been choking on their foie gras, as the Seanad, or waiting room for failures as the rest of us know it, is a key part of the system that props up the worst people in politics and delivers them back to us at every election.
Kenny is either being extremely brave to take on the vested interest that is Fine Gael, or else he has truly taken leave of his senses after the shock of being made to look like an uberwimp by Eamon Gilmore during the dispatch of John O'Donoghue.
But the truth, of course, is that Enda Kenny is now as much of a slave to his PR people as Brian Cowen is to his civil servants and the unions. Which explains the desperate attempt to suddenly surf the zeitgeist by leaping onto the bandwagon before it finally disappears over the hill.
The only bright spot in this sorry affair is the reference by Kenny to a list system as part of his proposed new broom. Although he probably sees this as just a new way to use patronage, it could be a brilliant way of bringing real talent into the stagnant pool of the Oireachtas. God knows, even one outsider from the world of business or science would increase the general IQ level in the Dail by a factor of ten!
The last great hope of reformers - the Greens - sold out to FF in the Programme for Government when they kicked reform into the long grass by settling for an electoral commission, whose final report can be safely ignored until the election is out of the way.
At least with FG now making such a bold grab for the people's vote, it will be next to impossible for any of the parties to bury reform from now on. Nevertheless, poor Enda has probably bought his ticket out of the party leadership with his talk of abolishing one of the carriages on the gravy train. The lazy good-for-nothings in his party will see to that.
The bottom line is that this movement for reform of our political institutions is too important to be left to self-interested politicians. They are cowering in their bunkers hoping we will go away. It's up to us to keep the pressure on until we have a system that is fit for purpose.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Mortgages and Moral Hazard
Jumping on the NAMA bandwagon has clearly robbed Fine Gael of any critical faculties they may still have had, if their latest wheeze is anything to go by. Oblivious as always to the State's finances, the leaders of the opposition have tabled a raft of amendments to the Government's NAMA bill, which is fair enough, as it can't be made any worse by changes. However, taking the populist path has led the party into the murky world of moral hazard, in their call for a "bailout for homeowners".
Demanding protection from foreclosure for the buy-to-let brigade, who stuffed their boots while the going was good in their ambition to be the new landlord class, might be popular with Fine Gael's core constituency, but it does nothing for the stability of society: if anyone cares about that anymore?
It's clear that the only people who are in 'negative equity' are those who are desperate to offload property, especially those who bought within the last three years. Why are they so anxious to sell? Because they are being hit by the double whammy of expensive repayments to the banks and the new 'second home' levy of €200 per house or room, which is bad news for all the greedy young landlord types who were so sure all the bills would be covered by their tenants.
We never get a mention in the press or parliament, but there are tens of thousand of us who resisted the temptation to be multiple homeowners living off students and shopworkers. We were sneered at by all those 'go-getters' who were buying like there was no tomorrow, but we took the disdain and refused to get rich on credit. Little thanks we are getting now.
As usual, those of us who practised the forgotten virtue of prudence are now in the firing line for bailing out the greedy FG and FF types who ransacked the banks for what they could get, in order to 'flip' houses and apartments for vast sums of money. Now we are being invited to shed bitter tears and provide billions of euros to save these people from the results of their own greed. What makes it even more galling is that Fine Gael are throwing the kitchen sink at Fianna Fail and the Greens for the alleged bailout of developers, while the only solution they can come up with is to add a few more billion to the cost of NAMA by extending the scheme to their own voters, ie, buy-to-let speculators.
With such egregious economic illiteracy on display in the Dail, it is truly a miracle that the international markets are still willing to lend us that €500 million we need every week to keep the public sector in Bulgarian apartments and 4x4s.
Indeed, the only result of making the taxpayer carry the repayments for this lot would be the total freezing of the property market, ensuring the failure of NAMA and locking-in the negative equity that is still only a paper loss due to the moribund housing market.
Well done, Lucinda Creighton et al,. Another fine mess you are trying to get us into.
Demanding protection from foreclosure for the buy-to-let brigade, who stuffed their boots while the going was good in their ambition to be the new landlord class, might be popular with Fine Gael's core constituency, but it does nothing for the stability of society: if anyone cares about that anymore?
It's clear that the only people who are in 'negative equity' are those who are desperate to offload property, especially those who bought within the last three years. Why are they so anxious to sell? Because they are being hit by the double whammy of expensive repayments to the banks and the new 'second home' levy of €200 per house or room, which is bad news for all the greedy young landlord types who were so sure all the bills would be covered by their tenants.
We never get a mention in the press or parliament, but there are tens of thousand of us who resisted the temptation to be multiple homeowners living off students and shopworkers. We were sneered at by all those 'go-getters' who were buying like there was no tomorrow, but we took the disdain and refused to get rich on credit. Little thanks we are getting now.
As usual, those of us who practised the forgotten virtue of prudence are now in the firing line for bailing out the greedy FG and FF types who ransacked the banks for what they could get, in order to 'flip' houses and apartments for vast sums of money. Now we are being invited to shed bitter tears and provide billions of euros to save these people from the results of their own greed. What makes it even more galling is that Fine Gael are throwing the kitchen sink at Fianna Fail and the Greens for the alleged bailout of developers, while the only solution they can come up with is to add a few more billion to the cost of NAMA by extending the scheme to their own voters, ie, buy-to-let speculators.
With such egregious economic illiteracy on display in the Dail, it is truly a miracle that the international markets are still willing to lend us that €500 million we need every week to keep the public sector in Bulgarian apartments and 4x4s.
Indeed, the only result of making the taxpayer carry the repayments for this lot would be the total freezing of the property market, ensuring the failure of NAMA and locking-in the negative equity that is still only a paper loss due to the moribund housing market.
Well done, Lucinda Creighton et al,. Another fine mess you are trying to get us into.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Sacred Cows
So now that the Government has got over the Lisbon vote and the Green Party conference on NAMA, it has only the budget hurdle to jump in order to live out the year. This should be a cinch, what with all the softening-up that has been done since the credit crunch hit and our solvency went down the tubes. However, the renewed talk from Government Buildings of 'social partnership' and programmes of recovery, shows Cowen and Co' running for the comfort blanket again.
We can take it for granted that if Cowen, Coughlan and the rest of the fainthearts in Fianna Fail get their wish and SIPTU et al are calling the shots, there will be no more talk of radical public sector reform and pay cuts. Instead, all the talk will be of new taxes and charges to protect the 'vulnerable' and 'workers'.
Apart from topedoing any chance we had of finding our own way out of fiscal disaster (instead of having it dictated from Frankfurt or Geneva), it will also mean a long overdue examination of massive benefit spending by the authorities will never take place, once again shortchanging the taxpayer who funds the whole thing. This is a pity, because some of the inconsistencies are now so obvious the Government could justly be accused of organised theft.
I know it's not popular to talk about it, but the issue of single-parent allowance falls into this category. It now costs over €1 billion a year to pay this benefit - about 50% of what we pay in child allowance to every young family in the State. That figure alone is staggering. However, it beggars belief that every one of the people drawing this allowance could not survive without it, and yet that is the argument that our authorities are happy to stand over. That is simply not acceptable, yet our political and administrative elites accept it without question.
That genuine radical, Margaret Thatcher, faced a similar paybill when she came to power in 1979, but instead of wringing her hands and ignoring a political hot potato, like her predecessors in No.10 and our own 'leaders', she just refused to put-up with an obvious misapplication of public money. Being a woman, she wasn't afraid to say the truth - that a big percentage of single mothers were actually living with the fathers of their children, but were allowing the taxpayer to subsidise their living arrangements instead of getting the father to pay for his own child. Her answer? To set up the Chid Support Agency, whose mission was to track down these "deadbeat dads" as the Americans call them, and get them to take responsibility for their own actions. The PC brigade howled, but it worked.
How many questions have been asked in the Dail about progress in making the missing fathers of single-parent children support them? What action has been taken by the Department of Social and Family Affairs to put the burden of raising a family back where it belongs - ie, the parents? The answer? In both cases, none!
So now you know why this tiny state is shelling out a billion euros on a totally preventable problem, and why the soon-to-be-reconvened social partnership will be raising taxes to pay for it. Because nobody in power in Ireland gives a damn about you, the taxpayer, and even if you've never had a child, you must pay in place of the man who did. Is that fair? Brian Cowen, Eamon Gilmore and Enda Kenny think it is.
We can take it for granted that if Cowen, Coughlan and the rest of the fainthearts in Fianna Fail get their wish and SIPTU et al are calling the shots, there will be no more talk of radical public sector reform and pay cuts. Instead, all the talk will be of new taxes and charges to protect the 'vulnerable' and 'workers'.
Apart from topedoing any chance we had of finding our own way out of fiscal disaster (instead of having it dictated from Frankfurt or Geneva), it will also mean a long overdue examination of massive benefit spending by the authorities will never take place, once again shortchanging the taxpayer who funds the whole thing. This is a pity, because some of the inconsistencies are now so obvious the Government could justly be accused of organised theft.
I know it's not popular to talk about it, but the issue of single-parent allowance falls into this category. It now costs over €1 billion a year to pay this benefit - about 50% of what we pay in child allowance to every young family in the State. That figure alone is staggering. However, it beggars belief that every one of the people drawing this allowance could not survive without it, and yet that is the argument that our authorities are happy to stand over. That is simply not acceptable, yet our political and administrative elites accept it without question.
That genuine radical, Margaret Thatcher, faced a similar paybill when she came to power in 1979, but instead of wringing her hands and ignoring a political hot potato, like her predecessors in No.10 and our own 'leaders', she just refused to put-up with an obvious misapplication of public money. Being a woman, she wasn't afraid to say the truth - that a big percentage of single mothers were actually living with the fathers of their children, but were allowing the taxpayer to subsidise their living arrangements instead of getting the father to pay for his own child. Her answer? To set up the Chid Support Agency, whose mission was to track down these "deadbeat dads" as the Americans call them, and get them to take responsibility for their own actions. The PC brigade howled, but it worked.
How many questions have been asked in the Dail about progress in making the missing fathers of single-parent children support them? What action has been taken by the Department of Social and Family Affairs to put the burden of raising a family back where it belongs - ie, the parents? The answer? In both cases, none!
So now you know why this tiny state is shelling out a billion euros on a totally preventable problem, and why the soon-to-be-reconvened social partnership will be raising taxes to pay for it. Because nobody in power in Ireland gives a damn about you, the taxpayer, and even if you've never had a child, you must pay in place of the man who did. Is that fair? Brian Cowen, Eamon Gilmore and Enda Kenny think it is.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Greenwash
Just back from the Green Party Special Convention on the Programme for Government, held at the RDS Concert Hall today. I must say, it was deeply disappointing.
The standard of contributions to the debate was reasonably high, with most of the delegates very aware of the issues, especially NAMA. But when the printed copies of the PFG were handed out, I quickly turned to the page on electoral reform, hoping the Greens would have used this once-in-a-lifetime leverage on Fianna Fail to secure real change in our deeply flawed political system. But it was not to be.
Instead of immediate changes to the numbers in the Dail, the voting system, even the continued existence of the Seanad; all of which were achievable in these negotiations, all we got was a promise of an electoral commission to "examine" the issues and report back within 12 months.
This was the one, and perhaps only time, when genuine change could have been wrought to our hidebound and corrupting political system. But the Greens bottled it, opting instead for vague, nitpicking promises on education and corporate donations, which won't make a blind bit of difference to how we are governed and can be easily ignored by any incoming FG/Labour coalition in the event of an election.
We had a chance to remake Ireland as the democratic republic of the people its founders dreamt of. Instead, pedantry and narrow-minded horse trading were the order of the day, from politicians who have made a career out of backscratching. Needless to say, the poor old taxpayer was completely ignored, as none of these spending plans were costed.
What we needed to see today were the fruits of vision. What we got was a shopping list any county councillor would have been proud of.
The standard of contributions to the debate was reasonably high, with most of the delegates very aware of the issues, especially NAMA. But when the printed copies of the PFG were handed out, I quickly turned to the page on electoral reform, hoping the Greens would have used this once-in-a-lifetime leverage on Fianna Fail to secure real change in our deeply flawed political system. But it was not to be.
Instead of immediate changes to the numbers in the Dail, the voting system, even the continued existence of the Seanad; all of which were achievable in these negotiations, all we got was a promise of an electoral commission to "examine" the issues and report back within 12 months.
This was the one, and perhaps only time, when genuine change could have been wrought to our hidebound and corrupting political system. But the Greens bottled it, opting instead for vague, nitpicking promises on education and corporate donations, which won't make a blind bit of difference to how we are governed and can be easily ignored by any incoming FG/Labour coalition in the event of an election.
We had a chance to remake Ireland as the democratic republic of the people its founders dreamt of. Instead, pedantry and narrow-minded horse trading were the order of the day, from politicians who have made a career out of backscratching. Needless to say, the poor old taxpayer was completely ignored, as none of these spending plans were costed.
What we needed to see today were the fruits of vision. What we got was a shopping list any county councillor would have been proud of.
Friday, October 9, 2009
The Truth Will Out
You've got to admit there is some comfort to be had from the knowledge that at least one government body isn't afraid to tell it like it is. I'm referring of course to the ESRI, who have not only had the balls to tell the public sector that they've been outpacing the private sector in pay since the 1990s, but also robustly defended their methodology in the face of much huffing and puffing from David Begg and Jack O'Connor, the ICTU oligarchs.
When the unions and the PC brigade rubbished the ESRI findings of a 25% pay gap everyone thought the economists would just back down and stop rocking the boat. But fair dues to them, they have come right back tonight and said that -using a different methodology - the difference is actually 26%.
How embarrassing for Blair Horan, boss of the Civil Service Union and chief apologist for rampant overspending, who made great play of the 'flawed' methodology used by the ESRI in their first report. He obviously never expected academics of integrity to take up the gauntlet he had thrown at their feet in order to show him up for the self-serving sophist he is, while, at the same time, vindicating their own reputations and the empirical truth of their findings.
I suppose such sloppy and unsustainable attacks by the union bosses on facts they don't agree with is all of a piece with their call for national strike action to forestall budget cuts that don't even exist yet and, knowing Cowen, may never exist.
But it's too late to be blaming the public sector unions for taking on the elected government, when it has been a succession of Irish Governments that handed them this overwhelming power and privilege over many decades of spineless surrender to the vested interests.
The only ray of light in this situation appears to be Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, who, for all his faults, seems to be aware of the awful vista facing the country if the traditional climbdown is performed once again in the face of union intimidation.
However, in this respect, he is truly a 'general without troops', as Fianna Fail are desperately waving the white flag behind his back while Fine Gael eagerly await their chance to drop their trousers and take a shafting from the oligarchs while the rest of us go down the tubes still crying out for "leadership".
It seems the only chance we have is for the Greens to have forced Fianna Fail to embrace electoral reform, including a reduction in TDs. This is the only way to force them and us to return some decent people to the Dail and may also explain why Fine Gael are so anxious for an election - they can see the writing on the wall and know that a reduction in seats will leave their ignoramus set out in the cold, which is why they suddenly want an election under the old rules.
Roll on the Budget, and lets hope the Cabinet live up to the rumours and get drunk enough to have the Dutch Courage to actually take a decision.
When the unions and the PC brigade rubbished the ESRI findings of a 25% pay gap everyone thought the economists would just back down and stop rocking the boat. But fair dues to them, they have come right back tonight and said that -using a different methodology - the difference is actually 26%.
How embarrassing for Blair Horan, boss of the Civil Service Union and chief apologist for rampant overspending, who made great play of the 'flawed' methodology used by the ESRI in their first report. He obviously never expected academics of integrity to take up the gauntlet he had thrown at their feet in order to show him up for the self-serving sophist he is, while, at the same time, vindicating their own reputations and the empirical truth of their findings.
I suppose such sloppy and unsustainable attacks by the union bosses on facts they don't agree with is all of a piece with their call for national strike action to forestall budget cuts that don't even exist yet and, knowing Cowen, may never exist.
But it's too late to be blaming the public sector unions for taking on the elected government, when it has been a succession of Irish Governments that handed them this overwhelming power and privilege over many decades of spineless surrender to the vested interests.
The only ray of light in this situation appears to be Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, who, for all his faults, seems to be aware of the awful vista facing the country if the traditional climbdown is performed once again in the face of union intimidation.
However, in this respect, he is truly a 'general without troops', as Fianna Fail are desperately waving the white flag behind his back while Fine Gael eagerly await their chance to drop their trousers and take a shafting from the oligarchs while the rest of us go down the tubes still crying out for "leadership".
It seems the only chance we have is for the Greens to have forced Fianna Fail to embrace electoral reform, including a reduction in TDs. This is the only way to force them and us to return some decent people to the Dail and may also explain why Fine Gael are so anxious for an election - they can see the writing on the wall and know that a reduction in seats will leave their ignoramus set out in the cold, which is why they suddenly want an election under the old rules.
Roll on the Budget, and lets hope the Cabinet live up to the rumours and get drunk enough to have the Dutch Courage to actually take a decision.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
O'Donoghue - A Good Start?
So that fat cheating bastard John O'Donoghue has left. Big deal! One down, 165 to go.
The fact that a barefaced freeloader like O'Donoghue has been made to relinquish a 200k job for his old 100k job isn't a matter for rejoicing. Instead, the tortuous evasions of his Dail colleagues before letting Gilmore get rid of him is the real story in this saga.
Once again Enda Kenny was about as effective as the proverbial organiser of the piss-up in the brewery. His increasingly desperate attempts to make hay out of O'Donoghue while simultaneously propping him up, came a right cropper when Gilmore saw his chance to be the leader of the opposition and took it.
It's great that Kenny and Fine Gael were caught redhanded in their duplicity, but I've noticed that the press and TV don't seem too interested in finding out why the largest party in the Dail tried their best to kill the O'Donoghue scandal, before it blew up in their faces.
Just like Fianna Fail (who usually take the media flak for their crimes) Fine Gael too, are up to their necks in all the corruption crap as well. Enda (longest-serving TD in the Dail) has presided over this culture without a squeak, while sermonising on everyone else's faults.
This is fact: on Enda's own front bench, sitting there holier-than-thou, is a man who put in expenses for mileage for a four month period in 2004 that were actually travelled by his parliamentary assistant in his own beat-up, 10-year-old Nissan Micra while the said TD was lying on his back doing nothing. Was his assistant offered any petrol money for doing all his clinics for him? What do you think? The money was pocketed by the same person who howls across the floor in moral outrage at all those bad boys in Fianna Fail!
So now Brian Lenihan has been stung into promising "reform" of the expenses system. This is the same man who last week promised a Commission to "examine" irrational rates of pay at the top levels of public sector organisations. Another report commissioned, another attempt to buy time until public anger cools and events are forgotten, and then it will just be another costly report gathering dust on a shelf.
Here's a suggestion for Brian and the Department of Finance - How about doing the work we pay you for and writing your own reports? Or even better, how about making a decision once in a blue moon instead of outsourcing it to Price-Waterhouse-Deloitte-Uncle Tom Cobley etc.?
If Lenihan is serious about reform he needs to stop fiddling around with pay rates and severance packages etc, and just take a bloody axe to every quango and semi-state body in this ripped-off land. That's how you claw back four billion smackaroos in double quick time, or don't they teach that down the Four Courts?
So O'Donoghue has stopped fouling the Speakers Chair of the most spineless, venal parliament outside darkest Africa, but his rotten carcass is still stinking-up the Dail and his corrupt hand can still be found in our pockets. But don't ever make the mistake of thinking that the other Gombeen men on the far side of the aisle will be any better. Sorry for the rant. But I suspect I'm not alone.
The fact that a barefaced freeloader like O'Donoghue has been made to relinquish a 200k job for his old 100k job isn't a matter for rejoicing. Instead, the tortuous evasions of his Dail colleagues before letting Gilmore get rid of him is the real story in this saga.
Once again Enda Kenny was about as effective as the proverbial organiser of the piss-up in the brewery. His increasingly desperate attempts to make hay out of O'Donoghue while simultaneously propping him up, came a right cropper when Gilmore saw his chance to be the leader of the opposition and took it.
It's great that Kenny and Fine Gael were caught redhanded in their duplicity, but I've noticed that the press and TV don't seem too interested in finding out why the largest party in the Dail tried their best to kill the O'Donoghue scandal, before it blew up in their faces.
Just like Fianna Fail (who usually take the media flak for their crimes) Fine Gael too, are up to their necks in all the corruption crap as well. Enda (longest-serving TD in the Dail) has presided over this culture without a squeak, while sermonising on everyone else's faults.
This is fact: on Enda's own front bench, sitting there holier-than-thou, is a man who put in expenses for mileage for a four month period in 2004 that were actually travelled by his parliamentary assistant in his own beat-up, 10-year-old Nissan Micra while the said TD was lying on his back doing nothing. Was his assistant offered any petrol money for doing all his clinics for him? What do you think? The money was pocketed by the same person who howls across the floor in moral outrage at all those bad boys in Fianna Fail!
So now Brian Lenihan has been stung into promising "reform" of the expenses system. This is the same man who last week promised a Commission to "examine" irrational rates of pay at the top levels of public sector organisations. Another report commissioned, another attempt to buy time until public anger cools and events are forgotten, and then it will just be another costly report gathering dust on a shelf.
Here's a suggestion for Brian and the Department of Finance - How about doing the work we pay you for and writing your own reports? Or even better, how about making a decision once in a blue moon instead of outsourcing it to Price-Waterhouse-Deloitte-Uncle Tom Cobley etc.?
If Lenihan is serious about reform he needs to stop fiddling around with pay rates and severance packages etc, and just take a bloody axe to every quango and semi-state body in this ripped-off land. That's how you claw back four billion smackaroos in double quick time, or don't they teach that down the Four Courts?
So O'Donoghue has stopped fouling the Speakers Chair of the most spineless, venal parliament outside darkest Africa, but his rotten carcass is still stinking-up the Dail and his corrupt hand can still be found in our pockets. But don't ever make the mistake of thinking that the other Gombeen men on the far side of the aisle will be any better. Sorry for the rant. But I suspect I'm not alone.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Suggestions for Sanity
Much mystification in Government and Opposition about the tax receipts plunging still deeper into the toilet. No wonder we all voted for Lisbon when our own leaders are getting us nowhere. But this time I think Cowen, Gilmore and Kenny actually did "get it" when the people acted rationally and voted for continued support from the European Central Bank. When our financial institutions are bankrupt of money and our politicians are bankrupt of ideas, we have to take what we can get and be thankful for it. But enough about what is wrong with our political establishment. Now we need to ask why.
Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, famously said: "Never waste a good crisis." So in that can-do spirit here are some suggestions that are now on the people's radar thanks to the incompetence demonstrated by the clique that pull the levers in Ireland.
First, the radical reduction in the membership of the Dáil that we all want, must be matched by a huge cut in salary and expenses, including the introduction of 'clocking-in' to verify attendance. There can be no more claims of 'entitlement' from politicians simply because they have been elected. Lenihan is on the right track with his intention to benchmark the pay of politicians and civil servants to the European norm, instead of using made-up numbers and false comparisons with the private sector to fleece the taxpayer. Oh, and watch out for the Oireachtas "committee-hopping" at which Pat Rabbitte is such an expert. It entails moving around from one committee meeting to another, staying just a few minutes at each one. Why? Because they get paid €100 for each committee they attend. Sweet!
Secondly, instead of simply abolishing the Seanad, it should be used as a means of co-opting non-political talent into the policy process, much in the way recommended by several business leaders earlier this year when the Government's incompetence threatened to drag us all down. It might, perhaps, have been useful to be able to include someone like former Goldman Sachs boss Peter Sutherland in the Government when we were trying to persuade the international financial markets that Ireland was not about to go the same way as Iceland last winter. He was willing enough, but there was no constitutional way to do it.
Thirdly, there is now a crying need for a third force in Irish politics - something to challenge the populist consensus that means this country no longer has a functioning democracy, now that Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour share the majority of their party programmes in common. The united front of the parties on the Lisbon Treaty was a rare glimpse behind the usual pantomime to the reality of Irish politics, ie, a social partnership oligarchy, ensuring the only competition between the parties is on which of them can spend the most taxpayer's money.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we have to force our ministers to be responsible for any waste of our money. This means making them legally liable for every spending decision they make, including lavish payoffs to fat-cat failures like Rody Molloy of Fás. If people like Mary Coughlan and Martin Cullen thought they would end up in the Four Courts explaining their largesse to some hotshot senior counsel, they might think twice before lashing out our money to cronies like it was going out of fashion.
That's enough to be going on with. Any other suggestions will be gratefully received.
Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, famously said: "Never waste a good crisis." So in that can-do spirit here are some suggestions that are now on the people's radar thanks to the incompetence demonstrated by the clique that pull the levers in Ireland.
First, the radical reduction in the membership of the Dáil that we all want, must be matched by a huge cut in salary and expenses, including the introduction of 'clocking-in' to verify attendance. There can be no more claims of 'entitlement' from politicians simply because they have been elected. Lenihan is on the right track with his intention to benchmark the pay of politicians and civil servants to the European norm, instead of using made-up numbers and false comparisons with the private sector to fleece the taxpayer. Oh, and watch out for the Oireachtas "committee-hopping" at which Pat Rabbitte is such an expert. It entails moving around from one committee meeting to another, staying just a few minutes at each one. Why? Because they get paid €100 for each committee they attend. Sweet!
Secondly, instead of simply abolishing the Seanad, it should be used as a means of co-opting non-political talent into the policy process, much in the way recommended by several business leaders earlier this year when the Government's incompetence threatened to drag us all down. It might, perhaps, have been useful to be able to include someone like former Goldman Sachs boss Peter Sutherland in the Government when we were trying to persuade the international financial markets that Ireland was not about to go the same way as Iceland last winter. He was willing enough, but there was no constitutional way to do it.
Thirdly, there is now a crying need for a third force in Irish politics - something to challenge the populist consensus that means this country no longer has a functioning democracy, now that Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour share the majority of their party programmes in common. The united front of the parties on the Lisbon Treaty was a rare glimpse behind the usual pantomime to the reality of Irish politics, ie, a social partnership oligarchy, ensuring the only competition between the parties is on which of them can spend the most taxpayer's money.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we have to force our ministers to be responsible for any waste of our money. This means making them legally liable for every spending decision they make, including lavish payoffs to fat-cat failures like Rody Molloy of Fás. If people like Mary Coughlan and Martin Cullen thought they would end up in the Four Courts explaining their largesse to some hotshot senior counsel, they might think twice before lashing out our money to cronies like it was going out of fashion.
That's enough to be going on with. Any other suggestions will be gratefully received.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Irish Independence - Gone Without a Whimper
There was a really brave article today from Jamie Smyth in the Irish Times. Brave, because it flies in the face of the entire PC ethos the Times has cornered in the Irish media market.
In his piece, snappily headlined: ‘How do we close information gap between Dublin and Brussels?’ Smyth totally put his finger on the dilemma facing the citizens of the EU and especially Irish voters on the Lisbon Treaty.
In outlining why it is becoming so difficult to keep up with the avalanche of new laws and regulations coming out of Brussels, Smyth referred to the decision last week of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the Metock immigration case. This concerns four couples – two non-Irish EU nationals married to two non-EU nationals who had claimed asylum in Ireland.
These plaintiffs had successfully challenged deportation orders issued by the Irish authorities when they appealed the case to the ECJ, which ruled in 2006 that the Irish Government had broken EU law by restricting the “right” of non-EU spouses to live in Ireland. Despite our government insisting that this was a fundamental blow to our immigration policies, especially in the area of sham marriages, the Department of Justice was forced to halt the deportation of 1,500 asylum seekers.
In the meantime, Ireland was joined by an alarmed Denmark in appealing to its European partners to amend the freedom of movement directive to stop this loophole being exploited. Last week the ECJ finally turned them down, forcing the Government to change a key element of its immigration policy.
Smyth’s most telling point in the article is that, despite the importance of the case, not a word was written in the Irish newspapers about the decision and no Irish radio or TV station mentioned the climbdown by Ireland and Denmark. Neither did Dermot Ahern, the Minister for Justice, issue a press release about it, nor did any opposition politician feel it worthy of any comment.
As Jamie Smyth so rightly says: ‘Clearly, the public cannot rely on Ministers to bring to their attention decisions in Brussels that have not met Irish concerns… Most of the sensitive discussions at the council, including the debate on Metock, are held in private session, making it very difficult for the public or even journalists to find out what has happened.’
Smyth and the Irish Times are to be congratulated for divining one of the most frightening aspects of the present EU and the role it is playing, in close collaboration with our political class, in imposing the will of a small group of judges upon this country, whether it is in our interest or not. No doubt Brian Cowen, Enda Kenny, and Eamon Gilmore are still convinced we rejected Lisbon 1 because we didn’t understand it. Do they?
Friday, September 25, 2009
FÁS and its billion dollar heist
There has been shock and anger at the news that Tanaiste Mary Coughlan handed out a massive 'golden goodbye' to disgraced FAS boss Rody Molloy as if it were sweets to a child.
It's no surprise to see old crony Brian Cowen voicing his "total confidence" in Coughlan. He is, after all, the person to whom she owes her elevation to her highest level of incompetence so far. It is, however, instructive to see the mock outrage of the panhandlers on the Public Accounts Committee, who are studiously avoiding the real FAS scandal - how the employment agency could have maintained a €1 billion budget over the years of full employment.
If you wanted an object lesson in how Bertie, Mary and Brian "blew the boom," you could do worse than study this massive fraud on the taxpayer. A fraud, by the way, that never disturbed the calm of the aforesaid Public Accounts Committee during all the years it was being perpetrated.
Forget the petty embezzlement of public money that this backhander to Molloy represents; the real crime is the diversion of truly vast sums of money to a public sector body that (on any objective basis) has been failing for years at what it was supposed to be doing - training the young and unemployed for lasting, productive careers - and that was, it claimed, spending this money on a problem that clearly didn't exist during the 'tiger' years; namely, mass unemployment.
So where did the money go? Under criminal law the answer is simple. It was embezzled. So forget the sacking of Coughlan (which should have happened years ago), or seeking the resignation of the board (Social Partnership freeloaders), instead ask yourself what the Germans, Swiss or Americans would have done under the same circumstances? And if you say, send in the fraud squad and have these crooks in shackles doing the 'perp' walk on TV, you are exactly right.
It's no surprise to see old crony Brian Cowen voicing his "total confidence" in Coughlan. He is, after all, the person to whom she owes her elevation to her highest level of incompetence so far. It is, however, instructive to see the mock outrage of the panhandlers on the Public Accounts Committee, who are studiously avoiding the real FAS scandal - how the employment agency could have maintained a €1 billion budget over the years of full employment.
If you wanted an object lesson in how Bertie, Mary and Brian "blew the boom," you could do worse than study this massive fraud on the taxpayer. A fraud, by the way, that never disturbed the calm of the aforesaid Public Accounts Committee during all the years it was being perpetrated.
Forget the petty embezzlement of public money that this backhander to Molloy represents; the real crime is the diversion of truly vast sums of money to a public sector body that (on any objective basis) has been failing for years at what it was supposed to be doing - training the young and unemployed for lasting, productive careers - and that was, it claimed, spending this money on a problem that clearly didn't exist during the 'tiger' years; namely, mass unemployment.
So where did the money go? Under criminal law the answer is simple. It was embezzled. So forget the sacking of Coughlan (which should have happened years ago), or seeking the resignation of the board (Social Partnership freeloaders), instead ask yourself what the Germans, Swiss or Americans would have done under the same circumstances? And if you say, send in the fraud squad and have these crooks in shackles doing the 'perp' walk on TV, you are exactly right.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
My Sunday Times Article
This article of mine was published in the Sunday Times' 'Think-Tank' column today, 20/9/09.
THINK TANK: NEW IDEAS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
Let The People Choose Candidates
Hugh Treacy
It’s a moot point how much of our present fiscal catastrophe is down to bankers, developers, or cocaine-addled New York investment brokers. However, one thing is clear, the present occupants of the Dáil have failed spectacularly in their primary role of holding the government to account for its actions, and are now generally seen to be inadequate in the performance of their duties as national legislators.
So why is it that our parliamentarians seem to be plumbing the depths of mediocrity? Why are our TDs no better than lobby fodder, when they should be leading national debates and keeping a close eye on the government? Perhaps it has something to do with our unusual form of democracy – proportional representation by the single transferable vote (PR-STV), which, by insisting on multi-seat constituencies, encourages auction politics and intra-party rivalry, at the same time discouraging TDs from concentrating on legislative duties in favour of ‘minding’ their constituencies.
No doubt PR-STV has its flaws. But if we want to encourage a better class of candidate for high office, we need to look at the present system of candidate selection.
In Irish elections, most candidates are chosen behind closed doors, by a tiny, self-interested elite of party officials and hardcore members. These are often parochial cliques, or worse, interview panels of staffers from party HQ (used by Fianna Fail in the last election). The criteria they use in the candidate selection process is opaque at best, but the high percentage of current TDs who are related to previous TDs, shows the nepotism principle is alive and well in the choice of candidates. Needless to say, talented, independent ‘outsiders’ need not apply.
A possible answer to this ‘graveyard of talent’ is the adoption of a system that has been operating successfully in the United States for decades. This is the ‘nominating primary’, which worked so well in overturning the ‘dead cert’ nomination of Hillary Clinton as the Democrat candidate for president and instead ensured the grassroots favourite, Barack Obama, was his party’s, and later the country’s, choice.
There are many variations of primary elections, but the most familiar are the ‘open’ and ‘closed’ versions. In a closed primary, voters designate themselves as the supporters of a particular party in order to vote on a list of candidates. This protects the party from attempts by political opponents to vote for the weakest candidate – a possible drawback to the ‘open’ primary, where all registered voters can participate in the choice of candidate. The main advantage of the open primary is the engagement of the largest possible number of voters in the process, prior to the actual election.
On August 4th, Dr. Sarah Wollaston was chosen by open primary as the Conservative candidate for Totnes, Devon, for the next general election, the first time a nominating primary has been used in the UK. It was all the more interesting as the current MP, Anthony Steen, had decided to step down in the wake of the British MPs expenses scandal. The Conservatives had hoped the electoral innovation would re-engage the public in the political process in the face of widespread disgust with politicians, and in this they seem to have been successful.
The British ‘first-past-the-post’ system had seemed to be cast in stone. But the fundamental shock of the Westminster expenses scandal has left everything open to question. Now, even senior Government politicians like David Lammy and Foreign Secretary, David Miliband are openly supportive of primaries as the best way of re-building the trust between a sceptical public and political parties, with Miliband describing traditional party systems as ‘dying’. They also see the advantage of the transparency that primaries bring to the deeply discredited parliamentary establishment, which, after losing the Speaker of the House of Commons as part of its post-scandal clear-out, needs all the help it can get.
With public trust in Irish politicians, and even the parliamentary system, being at an all-time low, perhaps there has never been a better time to install pure democracy at every level of the political system, and in the process take the fate of many talented would-be politicians out of the hands of the old guard and into the care of the people, who, after all, they are meant to be representing. With the upcoming review of the Programme for Government, there is now an opportunity for nominating primaries to be part of an overall constitutional reform package, so that it will no longer be the case that the first the voters see of a candidate at an election is their face on a lamp-post.
Hugh Treacy has worked as a parliamentary reporter in Leinster House and a parliamentary assistant to a TD and MEP.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Only Fools And Horses
I had a very enlightening chat yesterday with an ex-pat Irish businessman who has been running a multi-million pound business in London for the last 20 years. He was over in Dublin to oversee a contract his company has on a major piece of public infrastructure which is currently under construction. (For his sake, it shall remain nameless).
He was telling me that he has a major headache at the moment finding casual labour in Dublin. I kid you not! This at a time when 440,000 people are signing-on and the construction sector is on its knees. According to him, the rate of unemployment assistance is too high for unemployed workers to risk losing by taking work that he is offering. This is a problem for him, as the number of workers he needs varies day-by-day (admittedly, not too attractive in terms of job security). Nevertheless, a job on such a high-profile site would surely enhance your chances of getting more regular work and you would think the Social Welfare authorities would be insisting these claimants took any work that was offered.
My friend contrasts the €204 rate here with the £70 + being offered in the UK, and says his company's contract is being put in serious jeopardy by something as ridiculous as not being able to get workers in Dublin during the greatest depression this country has suffered since 1929!
I accept that some of his complaints may have been self-serving, but surely something is terribly wrong with our benefits system when it is actively discouraging people from working for a living? Not to mention the damage it is doing to firms who are coming from abroad to invest and do business in this country.
Mary Hanafin, the talkative career politician offspring of a career politician and sister of a career politician, needs to stop concentrating on the family business of career politics and more on reforming the benefits system her department is running, to start getting people off the dole queues and back to work. We are already hopelessly uncompetitive in the costs the public sector impose on business. Lets not kill the work ethic as well.
He was telling me that he has a major headache at the moment finding casual labour in Dublin. I kid you not! This at a time when 440,000 people are signing-on and the construction sector is on its knees. According to him, the rate of unemployment assistance is too high for unemployed workers to risk losing by taking work that he is offering. This is a problem for him, as the number of workers he needs varies day-by-day (admittedly, not too attractive in terms of job security). Nevertheless, a job on such a high-profile site would surely enhance your chances of getting more regular work and you would think the Social Welfare authorities would be insisting these claimants took any work that was offered.
My friend contrasts the €204 rate here with the £70 + being offered in the UK, and says his company's contract is being put in serious jeopardy by something as ridiculous as not being able to get workers in Dublin during the greatest depression this country has suffered since 1929!
I accept that some of his complaints may have been self-serving, but surely something is terribly wrong with our benefits system when it is actively discouraging people from working for a living? Not to mention the damage it is doing to firms who are coming from abroad to invest and do business in this country.
Mary Hanafin, the talkative career politician offspring of a career politician and sister of a career politician, needs to stop concentrating on the family business of career politics and more on reforming the benefits system her department is running, to start getting people off the dole queues and back to work. We are already hopelessly uncompetitive in the costs the public sector impose on business. Lets not kill the work ethic as well.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Cowen's Codology
More flummery from Brian Cowen today, when he made noises about the public sector having to cut pay. Is anybody keeping count of how many times he has said this? It must be running into the hundreds.
If the phrase 'playing for time' is in the thesaurus, there must be a picture of Cowen underneath it. Just how chronic does the financial situation have to become before this man will take action? God knows the path to recovery has been so well flagged over the past year any schoolchild could recite it, chapter and verse. We all know it is a fundamental reversal of any State's economic organisation to have the wealth-producing sector subordinate to the public sector in earning power. Yet this has been the guiding policy of every Irish Government for the past 30 years.
Now that Colm McCarthy has once again stated the obvious: that this nation is "bust", surely even the public sector unions can see the sense in reducing our massive borrowing requirement by lowering the enormous cost of the public payroll and the most generous social welfare rates in the Western world. Although I'm not holding my breath.
The pernicious populism that characterises politics in this country, and that is seen in the profoundly undemocratic social partnership process (to which Cowen is wedded), has led us to this crisis, but worse, it prevents us finding our way out of it. So long as the Irish establishment holds to the idea that permanent civil servants with secure jobs and pensions are to be favoured at the expense of workers and entrepreneurs in the private sector, who live with risk every day of their lives, then this country will have to remain dependent on the European Central Bank or some other external paymaster. The public sector has many virtues, bringing home the bacon for Ireland is not one of them. Wake up Cowen, before it's too late.
If the phrase 'playing for time' is in the thesaurus, there must be a picture of Cowen underneath it. Just how chronic does the financial situation have to become before this man will take action? God knows the path to recovery has been so well flagged over the past year any schoolchild could recite it, chapter and verse. We all know it is a fundamental reversal of any State's economic organisation to have the wealth-producing sector subordinate to the public sector in earning power. Yet this has been the guiding policy of every Irish Government for the past 30 years.
Now that Colm McCarthy has once again stated the obvious: that this nation is "bust", surely even the public sector unions can see the sense in reducing our massive borrowing requirement by lowering the enormous cost of the public payroll and the most generous social welfare rates in the Western world. Although I'm not holding my breath.
The pernicious populism that characterises politics in this country, and that is seen in the profoundly undemocratic social partnership process (to which Cowen is wedded), has led us to this crisis, but worse, it prevents us finding our way out of it. So long as the Irish establishment holds to the idea that permanent civil servants with secure jobs and pensions are to be favoured at the expense of workers and entrepreneurs in the private sector, who live with risk every day of their lives, then this country will have to remain dependent on the European Central Bank or some other external paymaster. The public sector has many virtues, bringing home the bacon for Ireland is not one of them. Wake up Cowen, before it's too late.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
The Councils' Taxpayer Cashpoint
The property tax mooted by the Commission on Taxation may well be the product of good intentions but is inherently unworkable. How on earth can you vary the thresholds with a sufficient degree of discretion to avoid blatant injustice? There are many people living in mansions right now who are literally unsure where their next meal is coming from. This is the reason previous property taxes (right back to ‘Red’ Richie Ryan in the 1970s) have been tried and failed. This one will too.
In the meantime, one of the stated reasons for the tax – supporting local government – is richly ironic, considering local authorities in Ireland aren’t making the slightest effort to support themselves. A report at the weekend highlighted the failure of councils to collect a total of €1 billion in outstanding rents, charges and bills. In some cases these have been allowed to lapse for months and even years. All this, while county managers lobby government for a return of household rates by any other name.
We shouldn’t be surprised. When you think about it, why should local authorities pursue their own debts when the taxpayer can be relied upon to cough up the cash? This has always been the case in the past and now the Commission on Taxation has duly obliged again. In the meantime, Cork County Council’s payroll costs are expected to increase by €7.2 million this year, i.e., the year of total fiscal collapse for the rest of us, who don’t live in la la land.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Outsider On The Inside
There was a tiny chink of light in the all-pervading gloom during the week, when Brian Lenihan appointed TCD Professor, Patrick Honohan, to the position of Central Bank Governor.
What would have been a normal event in any other European republic was rendered earth-shattering in Ireland, because Prof. Honohan is the first 'outsider' to be appointed to the post, meaning - not a civil servant.
This fact in itself is truly pathetic, and goes a long way to explaining the criminal mismanagement of the economy and its financial sector by the authorities. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to work out that a career civil servant in the Department of Finance is, by definition, a devotee of 'groupthink' in his department, and will bring not a glimpse of independent thinking or assertiveness to the post of Governor; qualities that are fundamental to the job if it is to be carried out successfully.
I suppose we have to be grateful for small mercies, even though this appointment is probably one more item on the Government's list of 'too little, too late.' Nevertheless, Prof. Honohan's posting may yet prove to be significant if it represents a turnaround in Lenihan's determination to carry out root and branch reform of the public service. This would require many thousands of appointments like Honohan's, to overcome the lethal inertia and sense of 'entitlement' that has literally cost us billions and shows no sign of changing by itself.
What would have been a normal event in any other European republic was rendered earth-shattering in Ireland, because Prof. Honohan is the first 'outsider' to be appointed to the post, meaning - not a civil servant.
This fact in itself is truly pathetic, and goes a long way to explaining the criminal mismanagement of the economy and its financial sector by the authorities. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to work out that a career civil servant in the Department of Finance is, by definition, a devotee of 'groupthink' in his department, and will bring not a glimpse of independent thinking or assertiveness to the post of Governor; qualities that are fundamental to the job if it is to be carried out successfully.
I suppose we have to be grateful for small mercies, even though this appointment is probably one more item on the Government's list of 'too little, too late.' Nevertheless, Prof. Honohan's posting may yet prove to be significant if it represents a turnaround in Lenihan's determination to carry out root and branch reform of the public service. This would require many thousands of appointments like Honohan's, to overcome the lethal inertia and sense of 'entitlement' that has literally cost us billions and shows no sign of changing by itself.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Democracy?
Interesting result from the Four Courts today. A farmer from Tipperary called John Burke had challenged the Government's right to stage a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, claiming the result had already been achieved during the referendum on Lisbon One. Reasonable claim, you would think. Not according to Mr Justice McKechnie.
The judge threw the case out of court and, for good measure, awarded costs against the unfortunate Mr Burke. It seems the powers-that-be take a dim view of mere mortals having the temerity to challenge their diktats in this matter.
The judge, in his ruling, seemed to suggest that none but eccentrics and misfits would presume that running a massive, costly and divisive referendum was anything but reasonable and natural. He went further, and described Lisbon Two as: "democracy working at its most fluid."
Strange that; considering that the governments of every other EU country were adamant that there would be no referendum on this issue, and the only reason we had one at all was due to a previous ruling of the Supreme Court, which ruled against an early attempt by the Irish Government to also deny us the right of voting on European treaties, back in the 1980s. If this is "democracy working at its most fluid" it is a fluid that the European Council has shunned en masse in relation to this treaty.
As I have said before, the Lisbon Treaty is probably harmless. Indeed, ratification of the treaty by Ireland would surely do us a power of good at a time when we stand desperately in need of support from the European Central Bank. Nevertheless, arguments of convenience must not be allowed to obscure the fact that a democratic decision of the Irish people was rejected by the EU because it did not accord with their settled plans.
Perhaps democracy has now become an anachronism? Maybe a federal Europe has to be formed by crushing every dissident viewpoint for the greater good? If this is the case, I wish someone in power would just come out and tell us that straight, instead of dancing around the central issue (whether we have the right to halt the plans of the European elite) and laying a massive guilt trip on us for spoiling the party. It would be the courageous thing to do.
The judge threw the case out of court and, for good measure, awarded costs against the unfortunate Mr Burke. It seems the powers-that-be take a dim view of mere mortals having the temerity to challenge their diktats in this matter.
The judge, in his ruling, seemed to suggest that none but eccentrics and misfits would presume that running a massive, costly and divisive referendum was anything but reasonable and natural. He went further, and described Lisbon Two as: "democracy working at its most fluid."
Strange that; considering that the governments of every other EU country were adamant that there would be no referendum on this issue, and the only reason we had one at all was due to a previous ruling of the Supreme Court, which ruled against an early attempt by the Irish Government to also deny us the right of voting on European treaties, back in the 1980s. If this is "democracy working at its most fluid" it is a fluid that the European Council has shunned en masse in relation to this treaty.
As I have said before, the Lisbon Treaty is probably harmless. Indeed, ratification of the treaty by Ireland would surely do us a power of good at a time when we stand desperately in need of support from the European Central Bank. Nevertheless, arguments of convenience must not be allowed to obscure the fact that a democratic decision of the Irish people was rejected by the EU because it did not accord with their settled plans.
Perhaps democracy has now become an anachronism? Maybe a federal Europe has to be formed by crushing every dissident viewpoint for the greater good? If this is the case, I wish someone in power would just come out and tell us that straight, instead of dancing around the central issue (whether we have the right to halt the plans of the European elite) and laying a massive guilt trip on us for spoiling the party. It would be the courageous thing to do.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Arizona Governor v Brian Cowen
Had a fascinating conversation today with an American from Phoenix, Arizona. He was telling me that Arizona is comparable with the Irish Republic in many ways. For a start, there are roughly four million people in the state; just like Ireland. Then, the economy is of a similar size - as in GDP if Arizona was a sovereign country - with a similar mix of revenue-producing sectors. But then the doozy - Arizona's Governor, according to him, is paid roughly $70,000 a year. As the whole world knows by now, Brian Cowen, the Taoiseach, is paid more than President Barack Obama, well over €200,000, with an unvouched expense account and personal driver and car. I think the people of Arizona can count themselves lucky they don't have to stump-up for our politicians!
Monday, August 31, 2009
Start Selling the Landbanks
Fine Gael are looking sillier than ever (if that's possible) with the double whammy of the ticking off from Garret Fitzgerald in Saturday's Irish Times and Richard Bruton's admission at today's Finance Committee hearing that his 'good bank' alternative to NAMA is riddled with inaccuracies. This is astonishing, considering Fine Gael are the main opposition party in the State and pay a small army of cleverclogs to come up with these proposals. What is worse, is that it shows the world that Ireland is completely bereft of anything that could be called an alternative government at the moment, which makes it even more imperative that the present incumbents get their act together and come up with a workable plan.
It also transpired today that the European Central Bank (which is now the only thing stopping the banks closing up shop for good) is becoming increasingly uneasy at the unfairness of the government's NAMA proposals as they stand (for the taxpayer) and their leisurely progress to implementation.
At this rate, former Taoiseach Fitzgerald's warning on the IMF being called in by Christmas, is looking ominously accurate. The pity is that Brian Lenihan seems to be getting his act together, and is now willing to listen to alternative views on NAMA (or is it the Greens breathing down his neck that is working the transformation?). Either way, the politicians are having to change their tune in the face of a remarkable groundswell from the ordinary taxpayers, who are now fully engaged in this crisis and are no longer willing to take anything on trust from the establishment insiders who brought us to this pass.
Lenihan is now talking about holding back some of the public money from the banks until it is proven that the bad loans are being redeemed by a rising market at some time in the future. This is an improvement on the original plan to wait until there was another property bubble in order to get our investment back, which was frankly mad. However, there is still an unwillingness to let the market do it's stuff and to start selling off some of the overvalued land banks and commercial property now, to let the price find its own level.
This scares the pants off the insiders, because they fear the collapse of the banks, the speculators, and, perhaps, the major political parties. Let's not forget, that as sure as God made little acorns, all the politicians have big shareholdings in the banks. The last thing they want is a collapse or nationalisation, which explains a lot of the doomladen talk about those possibilities from ministers over the last year. But the 'lost decade' in Japan, during the 90s, when the politicians did a major cover-up of the state of the banks and poured public money into them, is a stark lesson in what happens to an economy when harsh medicine is delayed just to favour vested interests. We need to burn away the accumulated greed and lies that these massive bad loans represent, and the only way to do that is to pay the banks the going rate for them, right now. And the only way to do that is to start selling them. Now!
It also transpired today that the European Central Bank (which is now the only thing stopping the banks closing up shop for good) is becoming increasingly uneasy at the unfairness of the government's NAMA proposals as they stand (for the taxpayer) and their leisurely progress to implementation.
At this rate, former Taoiseach Fitzgerald's warning on the IMF being called in by Christmas, is looking ominously accurate. The pity is that Brian Lenihan seems to be getting his act together, and is now willing to listen to alternative views on NAMA (or is it the Greens breathing down his neck that is working the transformation?). Either way, the politicians are having to change their tune in the face of a remarkable groundswell from the ordinary taxpayers, who are now fully engaged in this crisis and are no longer willing to take anything on trust from the establishment insiders who brought us to this pass.
Lenihan is now talking about holding back some of the public money from the banks until it is proven that the bad loans are being redeemed by a rising market at some time in the future. This is an improvement on the original plan to wait until there was another property bubble in order to get our investment back, which was frankly mad. However, there is still an unwillingness to let the market do it's stuff and to start selling off some of the overvalued land banks and commercial property now, to let the price find its own level.
This scares the pants off the insiders, because they fear the collapse of the banks, the speculators, and, perhaps, the major political parties. Let's not forget, that as sure as God made little acorns, all the politicians have big shareholdings in the banks. The last thing they want is a collapse or nationalisation, which explains a lot of the doomladen talk about those possibilities from ministers over the last year. But the 'lost decade' in Japan, during the 90s, when the politicians did a major cover-up of the state of the banks and poured public money into them, is a stark lesson in what happens to an economy when harsh medicine is delayed just to favour vested interests. We need to burn away the accumulated greed and lies that these massive bad loans represent, and the only way to do that is to pay the banks the going rate for them, right now. And the only way to do that is to start selling them. Now!
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Give Dan Boyle A Break
It's a mystery why Dan Boyle has become the bete noire of the press in the last week or two. It's also difficult to understand the odium heaped on the Green party.
Yes, they are in government with the people who let the bust happen. Yes, they are now propping up the most unpopular administration ever. But if people who are knocking them listened carefully, they would soon realise the Greens are the thin puce line between every taxpayer in the land and financial armageddon.
If you think NAMA is a good idea in its current form; have a go at the Greens. If you think Enda Kenny's inability to discern the correct figure of bad loans from the banks is no problem; have a go at the Greens. And if you believe rescuing the banks should be done on the explicit intention of stoking up a new property bubble within the next 10 years; Dan Boyle and the Greens are not for you.
This is because 4 million people are now totally dependent on the 2,000 members of the Green party to debate, decide and propose amendments to Brian Lenihan's legislation on NAMA. This means, the only political organisation in this country democratic enough to allow its members to steer its policies has, by some miracle, been given the chance to materially affect legislation which all the other parties are unwilling to improve on (in the hope they will bring down the government and get into power) and that Fianna Fail TDs and members are just silently, pathetically, accepting: simply doing what they are told.
So if you care about Ireland's survival as a sovereign nation, or whether you and your children will be paying punitive levels of tax for the next 30 years in order to salvage bank shareholders; get down on your knees and thank Dan Boyle and the Greens, because nobody else is doing anything to help you!
Yes, they are in government with the people who let the bust happen. Yes, they are now propping up the most unpopular administration ever. But if people who are knocking them listened carefully, they would soon realise the Greens are the thin puce line between every taxpayer in the land and financial armageddon.
If you think NAMA is a good idea in its current form; have a go at the Greens. If you think Enda Kenny's inability to discern the correct figure of bad loans from the banks is no problem; have a go at the Greens. And if you believe rescuing the banks should be done on the explicit intention of stoking up a new property bubble within the next 10 years; Dan Boyle and the Greens are not for you.
This is because 4 million people are now totally dependent on the 2,000 members of the Green party to debate, decide and propose amendments to Brian Lenihan's legislation on NAMA. This means, the only political organisation in this country democratic enough to allow its members to steer its policies has, by some miracle, been given the chance to materially affect legislation which all the other parties are unwilling to improve on (in the hope they will bring down the government and get into power) and that Fianna Fail TDs and members are just silently, pathetically, accepting: simply doing what they are told.
So if you care about Ireland's survival as a sovereign nation, or whether you and your children will be paying punitive levels of tax for the next 30 years in order to salvage bank shareholders; get down on your knees and thank Dan Boyle and the Greens, because nobody else is doing anything to help you!
The Cabinet - Drunk on Power?
It has been interesting to see lately how the big topic of discussion has changed from the economic meltdown to just how drunk the Cabinet is on any given day.
This has finally gone mainstream, with Taoiseach, Brian Cowen's interview with Jody Corcoran in the Sunday Independent, when he claimed he was able to handle his level of alcohol consumption and was "all right." Truly, we are now in GUBU territory, when the serving head of the administration has to reassure us that his drinking problem isn't getting in the way of doing his job.
On any bog-standard day in Irish politics, he might be right. Trouble is, we are now in the middle of a financial and fiscal crisis that has Ireland in a starring role in all kinds of apocalyptic headlines across the world. This, perhaps for the first time since independence, requires leadership of an extraordinary kind. But above all, it requires a crystal-clear, disciplined intelligence.
If you were to notice Brian Cowen in your local pub, you would clearly label him as a certain type of dysfunctional individual with 'problems'. The fact that Fianna Fail in their collective stupidity have made him Taoiseach, shouldn't blind us to the facts staring us in the face. This is a man who, on every conceivable level, is unfit to be prime minister and, indeed, unfit to be holding down any responsible position until he receives the proper level of care and attention that a man in his state should receive.
The fact that other senior members of the cabinet are also reported to be drunk on duty, tells us all we need to know about the mystifying sense of 'drift' in this government's response to the current crisis. Indeed, it has come to the point where the President should start taking an active interest in her ministers' ability to do the job for which they were given their seals of office. It is the very least the public need her to do to ensure that Ireland has a functioning government. We didn't elect these people to roll around drunk and then nurse hangovers while we pay them to work.
This has finally gone mainstream, with Taoiseach, Brian Cowen's interview with Jody Corcoran in the Sunday Independent, when he claimed he was able to handle his level of alcohol consumption and was "all right." Truly, we are now in GUBU territory, when the serving head of the administration has to reassure us that his drinking problem isn't getting in the way of doing his job.
On any bog-standard day in Irish politics, he might be right. Trouble is, we are now in the middle of a financial and fiscal crisis that has Ireland in a starring role in all kinds of apocalyptic headlines across the world. This, perhaps for the first time since independence, requires leadership of an extraordinary kind. But above all, it requires a crystal-clear, disciplined intelligence.
If you were to notice Brian Cowen in your local pub, you would clearly label him as a certain type of dysfunctional individual with 'problems'. The fact that Fianna Fail in their collective stupidity have made him Taoiseach, shouldn't blind us to the facts staring us in the face. This is a man who, on every conceivable level, is unfit to be prime minister and, indeed, unfit to be holding down any responsible position until he receives the proper level of care and attention that a man in his state should receive.
The fact that other senior members of the cabinet are also reported to be drunk on duty, tells us all we need to know about the mystifying sense of 'drift' in this government's response to the current crisis. Indeed, it has come to the point where the President should start taking an active interest in her ministers' ability to do the job for which they were given their seals of office. It is the very least the public need her to do to ensure that Ireland has a functioning government. We didn't elect these people to roll around drunk and then nurse hangovers while we pay them to work.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Lisbon - Who's Paying the Bill?
There was a bit of a stir in the press about the 'Ireland in Europe' stunt outside the office of the referendum commission. Pat Cox and Bridget Laffan stood on the steps holding up big red and yellow cards (as in football, geddit?) signifying that "lies" would not be accepted this time around in the push to get the Lisbon Treaty passed.
The Irish Taxpayer has no brief for either side on this question. Our main gripe is why, after spending millions on the first referendum campaign that, by all accounts, was properly run in all respects, we are now spending millions on a second campaign?
Clearly, the No vote first time around was deeply distressing to the powers that be. Yet we were all assured before that vote was taken that a rejection of the treaty would be accepted by the EU, who would simply move forward under the provisions of the Nice Treaty, or go away and have a serious rethink about Lisbon. But no: little old Ireland was told not to be so silly and to go away and do it all over again.
This is deeply worrying for those of us who are supportive of the European project and appreciate the harmony European integration has brought to a continent that almost consumed itself in conflict. Nevertheless, the democracy and unanimity that the EU prided itself on in the past now seems to be little more than a distant memory, if the peremptory instructions to our 'leaders' to "do it all over again until they get the right result" are anything to go by.
The sad thing about this is that the Lisbon Treaty is probably harmless enough in itself. The trouble is that European insiders like Pat Cox are so embedded in the bureaucracy of the EU that they cannot see the real unease that exists across the continent at the runaway centralising tendency represented by this string of treaties. Clearly, the original intent of "father of Europe," Jean Monnet, to win support for the project through prosperity, has been taken to heart by those members of the elite who have done, and are doing, very well out of Europe: none more so than Mr Cox, who started out as an occasional reporter on Primetime's forerunner on RTE back in the eighties and, thanks entirely to the EEC as then was, ended up as President of the European Parliament, or some such fabulously paid sinecure. Is it any wonder the poor hack's head would be turned?
Standing on the steps of the referendum commission (curious, seeing as they are supposed to be impartial) accusing opponents of telling lies, doesn't get Cox & Co' off the sticky wicket of explaining why the interests of the Irish taxpayer mattered so little to them, that they were happy to make us pay all over again for a referendum that clearly determined the will of the people first time around. And don't forget, exactly the same thing happened when the Nice Treaty was rejected by the Irish, and yes, we got stuck with paying the bill twice for that one as well.
If Pat Cox and his fellow card carriers want to stamp out lying in this campaign, they could do worse than start answering some questions about whose interests they are really representing: ours, or theirs?
The Irish Taxpayer has no brief for either side on this question. Our main gripe is why, after spending millions on the first referendum campaign that, by all accounts, was properly run in all respects, we are now spending millions on a second campaign?
Clearly, the No vote first time around was deeply distressing to the powers that be. Yet we were all assured before that vote was taken that a rejection of the treaty would be accepted by the EU, who would simply move forward under the provisions of the Nice Treaty, or go away and have a serious rethink about Lisbon. But no: little old Ireland was told not to be so silly and to go away and do it all over again.
This is deeply worrying for those of us who are supportive of the European project and appreciate the harmony European integration has brought to a continent that almost consumed itself in conflict. Nevertheless, the democracy and unanimity that the EU prided itself on in the past now seems to be little more than a distant memory, if the peremptory instructions to our 'leaders' to "do it all over again until they get the right result" are anything to go by.
The sad thing about this is that the Lisbon Treaty is probably harmless enough in itself. The trouble is that European insiders like Pat Cox are so embedded in the bureaucracy of the EU that they cannot see the real unease that exists across the continent at the runaway centralising tendency represented by this string of treaties. Clearly, the original intent of "father of Europe," Jean Monnet, to win support for the project through prosperity, has been taken to heart by those members of the elite who have done, and are doing, very well out of Europe: none more so than Mr Cox, who started out as an occasional reporter on Primetime's forerunner on RTE back in the eighties and, thanks entirely to the EEC as then was, ended up as President of the European Parliament, or some such fabulously paid sinecure. Is it any wonder the poor hack's head would be turned?
Standing on the steps of the referendum commission (curious, seeing as they are supposed to be impartial) accusing opponents of telling lies, doesn't get Cox & Co' off the sticky wicket of explaining why the interests of the Irish taxpayer mattered so little to them, that they were happy to make us pay all over again for a referendum that clearly determined the will of the people first time around. And don't forget, exactly the same thing happened when the Nice Treaty was rejected by the Irish, and yes, we got stuck with paying the bill twice for that one as well.
If Pat Cox and his fellow card carriers want to stamp out lying in this campaign, they could do worse than start answering some questions about whose interests they are really representing: ours, or theirs?
Friday, August 21, 2009
Enda Kenny Follows the Herd
So Enda Kenny says Fine Gael will be opposing NAMA. After sitting on the fence so long it almost seemed to be a religious devotion, the leader of the opposition has finally staked his claim to the moral high ground after just about everybody else in the country has had their say. If this is leadership, the guy passed out in his own urine in a pub doorway must be a serious contender for the presidency.
Say what you like about Brian Lenihan (and I have!) at least the guy came up with a plan when the markets were about to pull the plug on Ireland. He also had the humility to admit his own ignorance of economics - and the abject failures of the mandarins in Finance - by bringing Alan Ahearne on board at a crucial moment.
Fine Gael have been a busted flush for at least 20 years. So it is a sad indictment of the body politic in this republic, that the main party of opposition are still the ragtag rabble who inherited the split that took place in the IRA in 1922.
John Hume once asked, when decommissioning was a hot topic in the North, "where are Fine Gael's guns?" He might well have asked, where are their policies? This group of wannabe ministers are truly an ideology-free zone. One might almost say, an ideas-free zone, if it wasn't for honourable exceptions like Alan Shatter and David Stanton.
As someone who got closer than I liked to this party during the last Dail, when they had almost been annihilated in the polls but still managed to return 32 TDs thanks to our crazy form of PR, I can vouch for the bovine nature of the FG collective intellect. One only has to look at Paul Kehoe, the Chief Whip! or John Perry and Damian English to realise that any child from a special needs class could run rings around them. And yet these people are seriously being considered as senior ministerial material in the inevitable FG-led coalition we are soon to have.
Ask yourself why our press barons are not the slightest bit interested in asking these dunces any hard questions, or testing their fitness for office in any way at all. If you think Brian Clowen and Mary 'not-a-clue' Coughlan are dire, wait til these tulips start running the country.
Say what you like about Brian Lenihan (and I have!) at least the guy came up with a plan when the markets were about to pull the plug on Ireland. He also had the humility to admit his own ignorance of economics - and the abject failures of the mandarins in Finance - by bringing Alan Ahearne on board at a crucial moment.
Fine Gael have been a busted flush for at least 20 years. So it is a sad indictment of the body politic in this republic, that the main party of opposition are still the ragtag rabble who inherited the split that took place in the IRA in 1922.
John Hume once asked, when decommissioning was a hot topic in the North, "where are Fine Gael's guns?" He might well have asked, where are their policies? This group of wannabe ministers are truly an ideology-free zone. One might almost say, an ideas-free zone, if it wasn't for honourable exceptions like Alan Shatter and David Stanton.
As someone who got closer than I liked to this party during the last Dail, when they had almost been annihilated in the polls but still managed to return 32 TDs thanks to our crazy form of PR, I can vouch for the bovine nature of the FG collective intellect. One only has to look at Paul Kehoe, the Chief Whip! or John Perry and Damian English to realise that any child from a special needs class could run rings around them. And yet these people are seriously being considered as senior ministerial material in the inevitable FG-led coalition we are soon to have.
Ask yourself why our press barons are not the slightest bit interested in asking these dunces any hard questions, or testing their fitness for office in any way at all. If you think Brian Clowen and Mary 'not-a-clue' Coughlan are dire, wait til these tulips start running the country.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Banks Work 'Garret's Game' Again
The latest wheeze being worked on the taxpayer by the banks was flagged up today by Respond, the housing association. Apparently, some of their members have reported that their mortgage applications for affordable housing have been turned down by a number of banks in what looks like a highly organised pattern, despite the applicants having solid jobs, clean credit histories and all their other ducks in a row.
According to the respected association, the reason the banks are doing this is clear: giving out mortgages to these low-income buyers will have the effect of setting a statistical benchmark for house prices, something the banks are desperate not to do until the taxpayer (in the form of NAMA) has paid way over the odds for the shedload of bad loans issued by the banks.
This is all of a piece with the desperate attempts by the banks to keep Liam Carroll's Zoe empire on life support until he, too, can be offloaded onto us, the mugs, who will clean up their toxic tank of worthless trash and allow them and their bondholders to go right back to their bad old ways again.
It is a sign of how desperate the bankers are getting that they would risk showing their hand in such an obvious way to a respectable organisation like Respond. Things must be getting rough in the corporate mansions now that NAMA is getting such a rough ride in academia and the press, who are all agreed that this scheme is not much better than the scam that was worked on Garret Fitzgerald's coalition in the 80s by AIB, when they got him to saddle the taxpayer with the losses of an insurance subsidiary after selling him a cock and bull story about depositors losing their savings etc. That's a bill that we, the taxpayers, are still paying nearly 30 years later, but you don't hear anyone in government or the banks agonising about that, do you? Once they dump NAMA on us we'll never hear another word about it, but we'll be paying through the nose for it for the rest of our lives.
According to the respected association, the reason the banks are doing this is clear: giving out mortgages to these low-income buyers will have the effect of setting a statistical benchmark for house prices, something the banks are desperate not to do until the taxpayer (in the form of NAMA) has paid way over the odds for the shedload of bad loans issued by the banks.
This is all of a piece with the desperate attempts by the banks to keep Liam Carroll's Zoe empire on life support until he, too, can be offloaded onto us, the mugs, who will clean up their toxic tank of worthless trash and allow them and their bondholders to go right back to their bad old ways again.
It is a sign of how desperate the bankers are getting that they would risk showing their hand in such an obvious way to a respectable organisation like Respond. Things must be getting rough in the corporate mansions now that NAMA is getting such a rough ride in academia and the press, who are all agreed that this scheme is not much better than the scam that was worked on Garret Fitzgerald's coalition in the 80s by AIB, when they got him to saddle the taxpayer with the losses of an insurance subsidiary after selling him a cock and bull story about depositors losing their savings etc. That's a bill that we, the taxpayers, are still paying nearly 30 years later, but you don't hear anyone in government or the banks agonising about that, do you? Once they dump NAMA on us we'll never hear another word about it, but we'll be paying through the nose for it for the rest of our lives.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Let the People Pick Candidates
The word on the street is that the Green Party is looking to get out of this coalition with 'all deliberate speed'. The only problem is picking an issue that will resonate with the public and prevent the kind of meltdown in a general election that we saw in June's local elections.
With all humility, perhaps the Irish Taxpayer could suggest a topic that is worthy of collapsing a coalition if ignored: electoral reform.
The upcoming review of the Programme for Government between Fianna Fail, the remnants of the PDs and the Green Party, offers a golden opportunity to create far-reaching reform in our dismally inadequate political institutions, especially the way 'we' choose candidates for election.
As most people are aware, the vast majority of candidates in Irish elections are chosen behind closed doors by a tiny, self-interested cabal of party officials. These, inevitably, are the kind of small-town, small-minded cliques who seize control of local party cumainns as a means of controlling the decisions of county councils (especially lucrative planning decisions) and operate completely in their own interest. The only criteria they use in selecting candidates are whether they will obey the wishes of those who put them up for election and whether they are related to previously "safe" party members, officials, or office-holders. Needless to say, talented, independent 'outsiders' need not apply.
The truly appalling levels of corruption and mediocrity such a set-up perpetuates in Irish politics are too obvious to rehearse here. Nevertheless, the consequences are now too serious to ignore, with a scale of economic collapse that was thought to be unthinkable, caused largely by the gross incompetence and complacency of TDs and councillors who failed spectacularly to hold banks, regulators, the Government, and its numberless quangos, to account.
However, there is hope. As part of the Programme for Government negotiations the Green Party looks set to demand a form of 'primary' election as one of the concessions for staying in government. This would be very similar to the American system which achieves such prominence at the time of presidential elections; New Hampshire being the most familiar.
If Fianna Fail agree (unlikely, considering they used panels of salaried party employees to choose their last set of candidates) then Irish voters could at last be free to choose the candidates as well as those who are finally elected.
Such a move would allow the brightest and the best a chance to appeal directly to party members and take control out of the hands of the local party grandees, who use candidates as tools to achieve their own ends.
Maybe the recent support for primaries in the UK might help to swing the pendulum away from the control freaks who have caused havoc in the Irish economy and help a genuine democracy to flower in this much-abused country. And if you don't agree we are lacking in democracy, ask yourself why it is that only 2,000 Green Party members have the freedom to bring down Fianna Fail, NAMA, and the best-laid plans of the banks? Why not you as well?
With all humility, perhaps the Irish Taxpayer could suggest a topic that is worthy of collapsing a coalition if ignored: electoral reform.
The upcoming review of the Programme for Government between Fianna Fail, the remnants of the PDs and the Green Party, offers a golden opportunity to create far-reaching reform in our dismally inadequate political institutions, especially the way 'we' choose candidates for election.
As most people are aware, the vast majority of candidates in Irish elections are chosen behind closed doors by a tiny, self-interested cabal of party officials. These, inevitably, are the kind of small-town, small-minded cliques who seize control of local party cumainns as a means of controlling the decisions of county councils (especially lucrative planning decisions) and operate completely in their own interest. The only criteria they use in selecting candidates are whether they will obey the wishes of those who put them up for election and whether they are related to previously "safe" party members, officials, or office-holders. Needless to say, talented, independent 'outsiders' need not apply.
The truly appalling levels of corruption and mediocrity such a set-up perpetuates in Irish politics are too obvious to rehearse here. Nevertheless, the consequences are now too serious to ignore, with a scale of economic collapse that was thought to be unthinkable, caused largely by the gross incompetence and complacency of TDs and councillors who failed spectacularly to hold banks, regulators, the Government, and its numberless quangos, to account.
However, there is hope. As part of the Programme for Government negotiations the Green Party looks set to demand a form of 'primary' election as one of the concessions for staying in government. This would be very similar to the American system which achieves such prominence at the time of presidential elections; New Hampshire being the most familiar.
If Fianna Fail agree (unlikely, considering they used panels of salaried party employees to choose their last set of candidates) then Irish voters could at last be free to choose the candidates as well as those who are finally elected.
Such a move would allow the brightest and the best a chance to appeal directly to party members and take control out of the hands of the local party grandees, who use candidates as tools to achieve their own ends.
Maybe the recent support for primaries in the UK might help to swing the pendulum away from the control freaks who have caused havoc in the Irish economy and help a genuine democracy to flower in this much-abused country. And if you don't agree we are lacking in democracy, ask yourself why it is that only 2,000 Green Party members have the freedom to bring down Fianna Fail, NAMA, and the best-laid plans of the banks? Why not you as well?
Monday, August 17, 2009
Politicians Silent on Cost of Asylum
At a time when the country is €20 billion in the red, with the IMF expected to parachute in at any minute, one could be forgiven for thinking that our noble government would be trying to ensure Irish money was being spent on Irish people - but no - not according to Justice Minister Dermot Ahern.
Ahern revealed, no, had dragged out of him, the information that "Ireland" has spent €44.2m in the first six months of the year on accommodating 6,879 asylum seekers. However, the total spend by the Government on asylum seeker accommodation between 2005 and 2008 was €337.6m, he confirmed.
So, the taxpayer is getting close to supplying €400m just to provide accommodation for a relatively small group of people who, by virtue of their claim of asylum, are admitting that they had no right to be in this country in the first place; arrived here by unauthorised, or unknown means, and, in the case of Nigerians, are automatically in contravention of the terms of the Dublin Treaty (negotiated and signed at great trouble and expense to this country) which determined that an illegal immigrant must claim asylum in the first European country they arrive in. As our esteemed Ceann Comhairle and former Justice Minister, John O'Donoghue has said, "the only way a Nigerian could arrive directly in Ireland is if he came here by balloon." And as we all know, Deputy O'Donoghue is a great man for saving the taxpayer's money whenever he can.
Surely it doesn't matter whether you are a great believer in asylum or disagree with the entire concept: the central issue has to be the unspoken, but clearly long-standing agreement between all the parties in the Dáil not to discuss asylum in public and to avoid any questioning of the staggering sums of money being spent on people who have succeeded in illegal immigration.
If we are to have a successful representative democracy in Ireland, then there can be no issue that is considered too sensitive to be out of bounds for discussion in parliament. That is the reason we have 'parliamentary privilege', where a TD can raise and discuss any issue without fear of libel actions or arrest. The danger of this vow of silence from our spineless politicians is that we now have the situation that was the touchpaper for the American Revolution - "taxation without representation".
If the government is going to tamely hand over €400m that has been compulsorily taken from us - on pain of imprisonment - to people who, on the evidence so far, are mostly making bogus claims to asylum, then I sure as hell want to see vigorous debates in the Oireachtas on this issue. Don't you?
Ahern revealed, no, had dragged out of him, the information that "Ireland" has spent €44.2m in the first six months of the year on accommodating 6,879 asylum seekers. However, the total spend by the Government on asylum seeker accommodation between 2005 and 2008 was €337.6m, he confirmed.
So, the taxpayer is getting close to supplying €400m just to provide accommodation for a relatively small group of people who, by virtue of their claim of asylum, are admitting that they had no right to be in this country in the first place; arrived here by unauthorised, or unknown means, and, in the case of Nigerians, are automatically in contravention of the terms of the Dublin Treaty (negotiated and signed at great trouble and expense to this country) which determined that an illegal immigrant must claim asylum in the first European country they arrive in. As our esteemed Ceann Comhairle and former Justice Minister, John O'Donoghue has said, "the only way a Nigerian could arrive directly in Ireland is if he came here by balloon." And as we all know, Deputy O'Donoghue is a great man for saving the taxpayer's money whenever he can.
Surely it doesn't matter whether you are a great believer in asylum or disagree with the entire concept: the central issue has to be the unspoken, but clearly long-standing agreement between all the parties in the Dáil not to discuss asylum in public and to avoid any questioning of the staggering sums of money being spent on people who have succeeded in illegal immigration.
If we are to have a successful representative democracy in Ireland, then there can be no issue that is considered too sensitive to be out of bounds for discussion in parliament. That is the reason we have 'parliamentary privilege', where a TD can raise and discuss any issue without fear of libel actions or arrest. The danger of this vow of silence from our spineless politicians is that we now have the situation that was the touchpaper for the American Revolution - "taxation without representation".
If the government is going to tamely hand over €400m that has been compulsorily taken from us - on pain of imprisonment - to people who, on the evidence so far, are mostly making bogus claims to asylum, then I sure as hell want to see vigorous debates in the Oireachtas on this issue. Don't you?
Sunday, August 16, 2009
ESB Elite Holding Us Back
Inevitably when you're a taxpayer, your blood will be close to boiling when considering the manifold ways in which government can blow your cash. However, a neverending concentration on this painful subject would rapidly become a self-defeating rant.
If I haven't made it clear so far, this blog is not about attacking taxation per se, but the unacceptable waste of our money by an unelected bureaucracy who spend hundreds of millions as they see fit without any reference to the wishes of the people.
No doubt there are those who will say we elect a government which is given our permission to spend our money in accordance with the party platform put forward during a general election. That would be nice if it were true. But how many people can say that 'government' spending bears the slightest relation to the promises made by political parties at elections?
The truth is that the 'permanent' government of the civil service makes all the decisions on departmental spending, and the politicians who become ministers (with the benefit of their previous life experience as teachers, social workers, solicitors and publicans) quickly come to the conclusion that confining their activities to opening community centres, attending funerals of people they don't know, and playing golf, will be their wisest course of action.
The consequences of this dereliction of duty by our elected representatives is now clear to see. However, the fall-out goes beyond the current fiscal catastrophe.
Ireland is internationally acknowledged to be superbly positioned to exploit alternative energy. Already there are pilot programmes in place on the west coast testing the capacity of 'wave' energy - which we have in abundance - to be fed into the national grid, and the visionaries connected with these trials have ploughed lots of their own money into it, such is their belief.
But there is a problem. The total dominance of the ESB ( despite token efforts by successive ministers to free-up the grid) is acting as a massive brake on the alternative sector. Recent proposals by the Spirit of Ireland consortium to use natural seawater reservoirs as storage for wind energy - releasing pumped water during calm periods to turn turbines - has been completely ignored by the powers that be, despite answering the main complaint of the Energy Regulator that wind power is inherently unreliable.
There has to be a strong suspicion that the administrative establishment in this country is crushing any idea that didn't originate with them or their favoured acolytes. Perhaps the evidence lies in the fate of the 3.5% pay rise that was postponed for the public service last year due to the massive public deficit. Suffice it to say, the ESB employees were duly paid the rise, when nurses, et al, had to do without. The Government didn't even attempt to explain this blatant capitulation to the small group of massively overpaid and underworked union members who hold the ESB, and Irish energy policy, completely in their power.
The Irish taxpayer is only too glad to hand over a big part of his paypacket to fund projects that would have a long-term benefit for this country. That clearly includes alternative energy, which has the potential to be an important export-earner for all of us when, as expected, Europe's reliance on oil and Russian gas has to come to an end. But such visionary projects will earn us nothing if they are strangled at birth by the old administrative elite, who are happy to use our money to featherbed themselves and their pals while being careful to link politicians' pay and expenses to their own, to ensure a meeting of minds at the very top. If we want a future as an independent country, this has to be stopped.
If I haven't made it clear so far, this blog is not about attacking taxation per se, but the unacceptable waste of our money by an unelected bureaucracy who spend hundreds of millions as they see fit without any reference to the wishes of the people.
No doubt there are those who will say we elect a government which is given our permission to spend our money in accordance with the party platform put forward during a general election. That would be nice if it were true. But how many people can say that 'government' spending bears the slightest relation to the promises made by political parties at elections?
The truth is that the 'permanent' government of the civil service makes all the decisions on departmental spending, and the politicians who become ministers (with the benefit of their previous life experience as teachers, social workers, solicitors and publicans) quickly come to the conclusion that confining their activities to opening community centres, attending funerals of people they don't know, and playing golf, will be their wisest course of action.
The consequences of this dereliction of duty by our elected representatives is now clear to see. However, the fall-out goes beyond the current fiscal catastrophe.
Ireland is internationally acknowledged to be superbly positioned to exploit alternative energy. Already there are pilot programmes in place on the west coast testing the capacity of 'wave' energy - which we have in abundance - to be fed into the national grid, and the visionaries connected with these trials have ploughed lots of their own money into it, such is their belief.
But there is a problem. The total dominance of the ESB ( despite token efforts by successive ministers to free-up the grid) is acting as a massive brake on the alternative sector. Recent proposals by the Spirit of Ireland consortium to use natural seawater reservoirs as storage for wind energy - releasing pumped water during calm periods to turn turbines - has been completely ignored by the powers that be, despite answering the main complaint of the Energy Regulator that wind power is inherently unreliable.
There has to be a strong suspicion that the administrative establishment in this country is crushing any idea that didn't originate with them or their favoured acolytes. Perhaps the evidence lies in the fate of the 3.5% pay rise that was postponed for the public service last year due to the massive public deficit. Suffice it to say, the ESB employees were duly paid the rise, when nurses, et al, had to do without. The Government didn't even attempt to explain this blatant capitulation to the small group of massively overpaid and underworked union members who hold the ESB, and Irish energy policy, completely in their power.
The Irish taxpayer is only too glad to hand over a big part of his paypacket to fund projects that would have a long-term benefit for this country. That clearly includes alternative energy, which has the potential to be an important export-earner for all of us when, as expected, Europe's reliance on oil and Russian gas has to come to an end. But such visionary projects will earn us nothing if they are strangled at birth by the old administrative elite, who are happy to use our money to featherbed themselves and their pals while being careful to link politicians' pay and expenses to their own, to ensure a meeting of minds at the very top. If we want a future as an independent country, this has to be stopped.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Courts Cosh Carroll
Apologies to Chief Justice Murray and the Supreme Court. In an earlier blog I (and many others) impugned his independence from political pressure in the ongoing Liam Carroll case, expecting that he and his learned friends would cobble together some dirty little decision that would let the banks, Zoe Developments, the Government, and NAMA, off the hook.
Instead, the Court agreed with the admirably independent Mr. Justice Kelly in the commercial court and found the case presented by Carroll et al to be the barrel of tosh that everyone else knew it to be: leaving the Irish banks and Brian Cowen sucking on the cold air of reality that the rest of us have been breathing for the past year.
As the world and his mother knows by now, the Cowen regime hates reality with a grim passion, which is why they have gone to the limits of fiendish complexity to crush the taxpayer with NAMA. This will leave us picking up the tab for the Developer feeding frenzy for the next quarter of a century - just when Cowen, Coughlan and the rest of the Dail, will be enjoying their holiday homes in the South of France, all paid for by the most inflated salaries and pensions in the western world.
Perhaps now that the Courts have blown the whistle on the giant crap game that the banks and the politicians have been running, we can finally have the so-called fire sale that RTE and the Irish Times have been simpering about for so long, ensuring that the market value of this collapsed property bubble is finally established.
This would be a good thing, as only those who were profiting from the bubble will have anything to lose in the process. Instead, people who have a use for the property will be able to get it at a price that they are willing to pay, and will start doing something productive with sites and buildings that, under NAMA, would just be rotting away for years. This is our best chance of clearing the debris of the crash and perhaps even putting some life back into the flatlining construction sector (meaning real, hardworking builders, not the office-boy developers) and letting the market find its own level. If the banks can't cope with that, then tough. New banks will take their place.
All we need now is a Minister for Finance who's willing to admit he was wrong. Is that you Mr. Lenihan?
Instead, the Court agreed with the admirably independent Mr. Justice Kelly in the commercial court and found the case presented by Carroll et al to be the barrel of tosh that everyone else knew it to be: leaving the Irish banks and Brian Cowen sucking on the cold air of reality that the rest of us have been breathing for the past year.
As the world and his mother knows by now, the Cowen regime hates reality with a grim passion, which is why they have gone to the limits of fiendish complexity to crush the taxpayer with NAMA. This will leave us picking up the tab for the Developer feeding frenzy for the next quarter of a century - just when Cowen, Coughlan and the rest of the Dail, will be enjoying their holiday homes in the South of France, all paid for by the most inflated salaries and pensions in the western world.
Perhaps now that the Courts have blown the whistle on the giant crap game that the banks and the politicians have been running, we can finally have the so-called fire sale that RTE and the Irish Times have been simpering about for so long, ensuring that the market value of this collapsed property bubble is finally established.
This would be a good thing, as only those who were profiting from the bubble will have anything to lose in the process. Instead, people who have a use for the property will be able to get it at a price that they are willing to pay, and will start doing something productive with sites and buildings that, under NAMA, would just be rotting away for years. This is our best chance of clearing the debris of the crash and perhaps even putting some life back into the flatlining construction sector (meaning real, hardworking builders, not the office-boy developers) and letting the market find its own level. If the banks can't cope with that, then tough. New banks will take their place.
All we need now is a Minister for Finance who's willing to admit he was wrong. Is that you Mr. Lenihan?
Farmers See Sense
I was reading today's Farming Independent (as you do) and saw hopeful signs of sense beginning to dawn among the sons of the soil - at least in Joe Barry's contribution in the 'Rural Living' section - where, while bemoaning the loss of REPS, he had the following to say:
"It is easy to point the finger of blame at the mismanagement of the Government finances in recent years. Criticism is easy and, while deserved, it gets us nowhere. Opposition politicians, and especially the members and leader of the Labour party, are strident in their criticism of government but are silent when it comes to making useful suggestions as to how we get ourselves out of this mess. Few will acknowledge the urgent need for huge cuts in social welfare, health and education expenditure. Even fewer will suggest the sale of the Government jet, the reduction in the number of TDs and county councillors, the closure of the Senate, the necessary cuts in child benefits and the essential need to face down the public sector unions. Can you imagine any politician suggesting the sensible idea that healthy, able-bodied people on the dole should give something in return, such as providing community service each week? Or questioning the wisdom of having welfare payments that are double those in Britain. So easier targets are identified initially and REPS was one of these despite its obvious financial and environmental benefits." (Joe Barry, Irish Independent, 11/8/09)
Of course, everything he says is blindingly obvious to everyone but the Government, members of the Dáil, and the public sector unions. But this is where I find Joe Barry's outrage, and by extension that of the farming lobby, to be a bit hard to stomach. Barry and his fellow farmers were only too happy to participate in the fraud on the public that was the social partnership process. As part of that process, they were only too happy to wave through the benchmarking fiasco - which no government minister has yet denied was an embezzling of money from the private sector to buy off the public sector unions. And the farmers were only too happy to hold the Irish environment to ransom until they were effectively bribed with European and Irish taxpayers' money to do what any decent person would have done as a matter of course, i.e. stop polluting the Irish countryside.
So come on Joe Barry, turn that forensic eye away from the faults of others and towards you and your fellow farmers' many failings. Perhaps then the Irish taxpayer may be more inclined to accept your help in the battle to save our money from wasters.
"It is easy to point the finger of blame at the mismanagement of the Government finances in recent years. Criticism is easy and, while deserved, it gets us nowhere. Opposition politicians, and especially the members and leader of the Labour party, are strident in their criticism of government but are silent when it comes to making useful suggestions as to how we get ourselves out of this mess. Few will acknowledge the urgent need for huge cuts in social welfare, health and education expenditure. Even fewer will suggest the sale of the Government jet, the reduction in the number of TDs and county councillors, the closure of the Senate, the necessary cuts in child benefits and the essential need to face down the public sector unions. Can you imagine any politician suggesting the sensible idea that healthy, able-bodied people on the dole should give something in return, such as providing community service each week? Or questioning the wisdom of having welfare payments that are double those in Britain. So easier targets are identified initially and REPS was one of these despite its obvious financial and environmental benefits." (Joe Barry, Irish Independent, 11/8/09)
Of course, everything he says is blindingly obvious to everyone but the Government, members of the Dáil, and the public sector unions. But this is where I find Joe Barry's outrage, and by extension that of the farming lobby, to be a bit hard to stomach. Barry and his fellow farmers were only too happy to participate in the fraud on the public that was the social partnership process. As part of that process, they were only too happy to wave through the benchmarking fiasco - which no government minister has yet denied was an embezzling of money from the private sector to buy off the public sector unions. And the farmers were only too happy to hold the Irish environment to ransom until they were effectively bribed with European and Irish taxpayers' money to do what any decent person would have done as a matter of course, i.e. stop polluting the Irish countryside.
So come on Joe Barry, turn that forensic eye away from the faults of others and towards you and your fellow farmers' many failings. Perhaps then the Irish taxpayer may be more inclined to accept your help in the battle to save our money from wasters.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Free Riders
There seems to be a certain muted outrage from the people about the twin scandals of politicians ripping us off, despite their world-beating salaries, and those on the opposite end of the scale who are basically having a laugh at our expense by abusing the social welfare system.
The fingers in each case are being pointed, respectively, at John O'Donoghue, and the Harte family in Co. Clare: each of them being shameless 'free riders' on the taxpayer and each of them being totally untroubled by the apparatus of the Irish State in their jollies.
It is easy to blame Deputy O'Donoghue and the Happy Hartes for their panhandling at our expense, and of course both parties would be seeing the inside of a prison cell in any other part of the world. But the real culprits are the 'officials' in government, who see themselves as being on a god-given mission to milk the taxpayer for every penny they can get, so that it can be doled out the to the bone idle in accordance with their cod socialist/Irish Times worldview. And, of course, the ever useless Cowen/Coughlan duopoly stands back and lets them get on with it.
It's a funny old world.
The fingers in each case are being pointed, respectively, at John O'Donoghue, and the Harte family in Co. Clare: each of them being shameless 'free riders' on the taxpayer and each of them being totally untroubled by the apparatus of the Irish State in their jollies.
It is easy to blame Deputy O'Donoghue and the Happy Hartes for their panhandling at our expense, and of course both parties would be seeing the inside of a prison cell in any other part of the world. But the real culprits are the 'officials' in government, who see themselves as being on a god-given mission to milk the taxpayer for every penny they can get, so that it can be doled out the to the bone idle in accordance with their cod socialist/Irish Times worldview. And, of course, the ever useless Cowen/Coughlan duopoly stands back and lets them get on with it.
It's a funny old world.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Cosseted Carroll
Surprise, surprise. Liam Carroll's appeal to the Supreme Court against the decision of the Commercial Court not to entertain his application for protection against his creditors in ACCBank, looks to be paying off. Today they decided to grant him protection until next Tuesday, when his case will be heard in full. With Chief Justice John Murray saying he thought Carroll had a reasonable case to make.
Does anyone doubt that the full weight of the establishment is being brought to bear on the judiciary to play ball with their flavour of the month: NAMA? If not, that in itself would be amazing, seeing as we are constantly being told by our betters in government that there is no other option to save the economy from disaster.
Since the publication of the Heads of the Bill for NAMA, there has been a rising tide of concern from ordinary taxpayers about the horrifying implications of paying off delinquent developers' loans with a valuation system that can only be described as pure fantasy.
The government's determination to bail out the banks by lumbering the taxpayer with the biggest (and most worthless) property portfolio in the world is bad enough. But now that very same taxpayer is getting his head around the prospect of being forced to buy €90 billion worth of bad debt on the basis of some unknown valuer's best guess of what it will be worth five or 10 years from now, when the next property price bubble will be underway.
If an individual and not the Irish State was acting this way, he would be rapidly committed to the nearest institution for the terminally bewildered!
The truth is, we can't afford NAMA. It is as simple and terrifying as that. Added to that is the fact that we are already supporting the banks to the tune of €400 billion, in the shape of the guarantee that Brian Lenihan extended to them last September when they were all on the brink of going bust because of the run on Anglo Irish Bank. Oh! not forgetting that we have already nationalised their losses as well.
So, NAMA is just one favour too far for the banks and developers on the part of us taxpayers. The trouble is, is anyone listening to us? What do you think?
Does anyone doubt that the full weight of the establishment is being brought to bear on the judiciary to play ball with their flavour of the month: NAMA? If not, that in itself would be amazing, seeing as we are constantly being told by our betters in government that there is no other option to save the economy from disaster.
Since the publication of the Heads of the Bill for NAMA, there has been a rising tide of concern from ordinary taxpayers about the horrifying implications of paying off delinquent developers' loans with a valuation system that can only be described as pure fantasy.
The government's determination to bail out the banks by lumbering the taxpayer with the biggest (and most worthless) property portfolio in the world is bad enough. But now that very same taxpayer is getting his head around the prospect of being forced to buy €90 billion worth of bad debt on the basis of some unknown valuer's best guess of what it will be worth five or 10 years from now, when the next property price bubble will be underway.
If an individual and not the Irish State was acting this way, he would be rapidly committed to the nearest institution for the terminally bewildered!
The truth is, we can't afford NAMA. It is as simple and terrifying as that. Added to that is the fact that we are already supporting the banks to the tune of €400 billion, in the shape of the guarantee that Brian Lenihan extended to them last September when they were all on the brink of going bust because of the run on Anglo Irish Bank. Oh! not forgetting that we have already nationalised their losses as well.
So, NAMA is just one favour too far for the banks and developers on the part of us taxpayers. The trouble is, is anyone listening to us? What do you think?
Monday, August 3, 2009
Commission on Taxation - Best Excuse Ever?
So the much-vaunted Commission on Taxation is due to report any day - notice how the date is left vague, just like the An Bord Snip Nua report? I guess they want to tease us a little bit longer about the taxes that are going to descend on us like the seven plagues of Egypt.
But that is just the point. We at Irish Taxpayer (through our excellent contacts in the Green Party) happen to know for a fact that the Commission's report is considered by the Cabinet to be the real show in town. Colm McCarthy's report isn't even at the races as far as they are concerned.
Now, this may come as somewhat of a surprise to all you honest souls out there who were under the impression that Mr. McCarthy and his friends had gone to all that trouble in order to shave a few billion off the massive €20 billion deficit we are running this year, but you don't know the mindset that drives this government and, indeed, the opposition parties as well.
As far as they are concerned, the commitments made to the unions in the 'social partnership' process are non-negotiable: meaning they don't want industrial armageddon to break out in the public sector at the prospect of cuts and lay-offs.
This can only mean making up the massive shortfall by hiking up taxes across the board, despite all protestations to the contrary. Which is why the Commission's report, which was supposed to be about "modernising", "streamlining", "updating" the tax system, will instead be all about clever new ways of ripping-off the taxpayer again.
This, of course, is close to madness during the worst recession for 70 years. Brian Lenihan has already admitted that his rise in VAT last October was a total disaster and completely counter-productive. You only have to walk down any high street to see the evidence of that, with empty store fronts everywhere. However, the political/civil service elite are nothing if not slow learners, and all the smoke signals point to another smash and grab raid on your wallets to fill the yawning gap in revenue that their incompetence caused in the first place.
After his April budget (shoring up the damage from the last one) Brian Lenihan returned from receiving instructions from his bosses in Brussels to gleefully report their amazement at how much punishment the Irish people were absorbing without a murmur. If so much tax had been imposed in France, he was reportedly told, "there would have been rioting in the streets".
Mr Lenihan, and his invisible master, Mr Cowen, should be wary of taking the taxpayer's patience for granted. Nobody wants to see rioting on the streets, á la France, but they should remember that the only area where consent is not allowed to the people is in the taxation of their income. If you resist being relieved of your legally earned money, you will eventually find yourself in jail. This is the reason we have every right to expect a wise and prudent use of our taxable income by our elected representatives and their servants.
Our leaders must remember, we were not put on this earth to be their personal ATM machines. That also applies to all those who are still enjoying lavish salaries at our expense. The Irish taxpayer is no longer the only interest group in Ireland that has no voice. We will see to that.
But that is just the point. We at Irish Taxpayer (through our excellent contacts in the Green Party) happen to know for a fact that the Commission's report is considered by the Cabinet to be the real show in town. Colm McCarthy's report isn't even at the races as far as they are concerned.
Now, this may come as somewhat of a surprise to all you honest souls out there who were under the impression that Mr. McCarthy and his friends had gone to all that trouble in order to shave a few billion off the massive €20 billion deficit we are running this year, but you don't know the mindset that drives this government and, indeed, the opposition parties as well.
As far as they are concerned, the commitments made to the unions in the 'social partnership' process are non-negotiable: meaning they don't want industrial armageddon to break out in the public sector at the prospect of cuts and lay-offs.
This can only mean making up the massive shortfall by hiking up taxes across the board, despite all protestations to the contrary. Which is why the Commission's report, which was supposed to be about "modernising", "streamlining", "updating" the tax system, will instead be all about clever new ways of ripping-off the taxpayer again.
This, of course, is close to madness during the worst recession for 70 years. Brian Lenihan has already admitted that his rise in VAT last October was a total disaster and completely counter-productive. You only have to walk down any high street to see the evidence of that, with empty store fronts everywhere. However, the political/civil service elite are nothing if not slow learners, and all the smoke signals point to another smash and grab raid on your wallets to fill the yawning gap in revenue that their incompetence caused in the first place.
After his April budget (shoring up the damage from the last one) Brian Lenihan returned from receiving instructions from his bosses in Brussels to gleefully report their amazement at how much punishment the Irish people were absorbing without a murmur. If so much tax had been imposed in France, he was reportedly told, "there would have been rioting in the streets".
Mr Lenihan, and his invisible master, Mr Cowen, should be wary of taking the taxpayer's patience for granted. Nobody wants to see rioting on the streets, á la France, but they should remember that the only area where consent is not allowed to the people is in the taxation of their income. If you resist being relieved of your legally earned money, you will eventually find yourself in jail. This is the reason we have every right to expect a wise and prudent use of our taxable income by our elected representatives and their servants.
Our leaders must remember, we were not put on this earth to be their personal ATM machines. That also applies to all those who are still enjoying lavish salaries at our expense. The Irish taxpayer is no longer the only interest group in Ireland that has no voice. We will see to that.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Voting Reform Will Save Us Money
It's a moot point how much of our present fiscal catastrophe is down to bankers, developers, or cocaine-addled New York investment brokers. However, one thing is sure, the present gang of incompetents cluttering up the seats in Dáil Eireann didn't have the faintest idea what was happening in the run-up to the property crash here and are still completely in the dark about what they should do to dig us out of it.
Any parliament that contains 166 members should, you would think, be able to spot the dangers of a credit-fuelled, greed-driven, free-for-all in the property market and take steps to prevent the worst effects of its inevitable crash. But not this lot. And now, through NAMA, it is once again, you guessed it, the Irish Taxpayer who is the first port of call for the politicians who are looking for someone to carry the financial can for their monumental ineptitude.
So why is it that our national legislators are generally agreed to be plumbing the depths of mediocrity? Why are our TDs no better than lobby fodder, when they should be leading debate and keeping a close eye on the government? Perhaps we should be taking a look at our crazy form of democracy - proportional representation by the single transferable vote (PRSTV) which, by insisting on multi-seat constituencies, encourages blatant vote-buying and auction politics, as well as a total disinterest by our TDs in national issues in favour of 'minding' the constituency, by promising ever more council houses, medical cards, and eternal dole payments for the favoured groups of captive voters (all at the taxpayers' expense, by the way).
However, no one can blame the public for getting what they can out of these chancers, especially as they are never given a chance to vote for someone who cares about the country, is qualified to judge the issues and has the backbone to stand up for the truth against the get-rich-quick merchants who bankroll the big parties. This is because the local party branches of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael (made up of a tiny number of party hacks) are the ones who choose who runs in the general and local elections. So the first the voter knows about a candidate is when they see their face up on a tree or a lamp-post. It's a bit late at that stage to figure out if they know anything about international finance, or would be good in a crisis!
It might, just might, be better to listen to the political thinkers (like Danny Finkelstein in the UK) who believe the only way to get good people elected is to sidestep the petty jealousies of the local party branches by bringing in a 'primary' system of nominating candidates for election, just like the USA.
This is the system that worked so well in overturning the 'dead cert' election of Hilary Clinton in favour of the virtually unknown Barack Obama. It is also pure democracy, compared to the interview panels, stuffed with party staffers, that chose many of Fianna Fail's candidates in 2007 and in the local elections last June.
Perhaps this is the only way we are going to finally get some people with the brains and integrity to avoid running us into a wall in future, and to save the Irish Taxpayer having to pick up a €90 billion tab (and counting) for the negligence of our freeloading politicians who were, as usual, asleep at the wheel.
Any parliament that contains 166 members should, you would think, be able to spot the dangers of a credit-fuelled, greed-driven, free-for-all in the property market and take steps to prevent the worst effects of its inevitable crash. But not this lot. And now, through NAMA, it is once again, you guessed it, the Irish Taxpayer who is the first port of call for the politicians who are looking for someone to carry the financial can for their monumental ineptitude.
So why is it that our national legislators are generally agreed to be plumbing the depths of mediocrity? Why are our TDs no better than lobby fodder, when they should be leading debate and keeping a close eye on the government? Perhaps we should be taking a look at our crazy form of democracy - proportional representation by the single transferable vote (PRSTV) which, by insisting on multi-seat constituencies, encourages blatant vote-buying and auction politics, as well as a total disinterest by our TDs in national issues in favour of 'minding' the constituency, by promising ever more council houses, medical cards, and eternal dole payments for the favoured groups of captive voters (all at the taxpayers' expense, by the way).
However, no one can blame the public for getting what they can out of these chancers, especially as they are never given a chance to vote for someone who cares about the country, is qualified to judge the issues and has the backbone to stand up for the truth against the get-rich-quick merchants who bankroll the big parties. This is because the local party branches of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael (made up of a tiny number of party hacks) are the ones who choose who runs in the general and local elections. So the first the voter knows about a candidate is when they see their face up on a tree or a lamp-post. It's a bit late at that stage to figure out if they know anything about international finance, or would be good in a crisis!
It might, just might, be better to listen to the political thinkers (like Danny Finkelstein in the UK) who believe the only way to get good people elected is to sidestep the petty jealousies of the local party branches by bringing in a 'primary' system of nominating candidates for election, just like the USA.
This is the system that worked so well in overturning the 'dead cert' election of Hilary Clinton in favour of the virtually unknown Barack Obama. It is also pure democracy, compared to the interview panels, stuffed with party staffers, that chose many of Fianna Fail's candidates in 2007 and in the local elections last June.
Perhaps this is the only way we are going to finally get some people with the brains and integrity to avoid running us into a wall in future, and to save the Irish Taxpayer having to pick up a €90 billion tab (and counting) for the negligence of our freeloading politicians who were, as usual, asleep at the wheel.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
'Bull' Blows Our Dosh!
So our beloved Ceann Comhairle, John 'Bull' O'Donoghue, blew over €120,000 of our hard-earned on junkets for himself and the mrs while he was Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism (there's a contradiction in terms). Bad enough in itself, but this is just the stuff he was shameless enough to claim for. Turns out he and all the other freeloaders in the Dáil are getting tons more stuff on "unvouched" expenses, and none of them see anything wrong with that. And in the final irony, the Brazen Bull is the boy in charge of the Houses of the Oireachtas commission, whose job it is to "reform" the expenses jamboree to keep us poor slobs happy. Beyond belief!
Friday, July 31, 2009
More millions gone
So the government have just blown another hundred million or so, this time on the abuse report. And we're supposed to trust this lot to run NAMA? Hold on to your wallets.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Beginning
Today is the first day of the Irish Taxpayer's fightback against breathtaking government waste of our hard-earned cash.
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