Irish Election - Coverage of Irish Politics, News and Current Affairs

In the end the latter half of 2008 was worse than expected, certainly so if you were a member of the government that didn’t see bad times coming until July. Today we get a look at the end of year exchequer figures. That single set of numbers are likely to determine so much this year. The government will spend all year - and more besides - trying to address it. With Cowen hinting at an €8 billion deficit and five years of remedial work, the news is high-impact.

There are three separate elections next year; local, European and Lisbon. Three different chances for the public to give government a good kicking for cuts to services and venting spleen over bank bailouts.

Continue reading ‘Determining the way early on’ »

Tony Gregory TD has died after a long illness. Deepest sympathies to his family, colleagues and supporters. He was a courageous politician and will be missed.

RIP

Edit: World by Storm has a wonderful post on Cedar Lounge on the passing of Tony Gregory, someone whom he had known and worked with.

Harry McGee has a sit down with Enda Kenny, Fine Gael leader in today’s Irish Times. It is unsurprising that Kenny expects an early election, though by my reckoning it only happens if the Green Party pull the plug I doubt Fianna Fail TDs would be clambering to campaign preferring to “wait and see”, and moreover expects to win it. They will announce later this month a policy of national insurance model of health care to be implemented if they get into power.

Continue reading ‘Enda Kenny Ready and Waiting for Election’ »

Best wishes to all our readers and bloggers for 2009, after a hectic 2008 with loads going in the ’sphere and in politics 2009 looks like being even bigger and better.

Two elections and another referendum, the possibility of a Fianna Fail leader observing the spectacle of his party turning on its own and the engaging problem of cutting resources from front line services in the absence of any semblence of an economic plan.

It is an interesting spat, I read a lot of Brian Hayes releases as they come into the inbox here and it is interesting how he does focus on the micro, chasing down figures which might be obscure to some but I always thought it was a sign of a decent command of his brief. Well Batt o Keeffee disagrees and took the opportunity of Brian Hayes latest release to smack down Fine Gael’s front bench golden boy. Via the Examiner:

“Deputy Hayes is issuing so many micro-level press releases that trying to digest them is a bit like drinking water from a fire hose.

“Perhaps in the new year, Deputy Hayes will resolve to focus more of his energy on constructive policy-making, lest the huge volume of press releases he issues almost daily frames him as the impulsive boy who cried wolf,” the minister said.

Continue reading ‘Hayes Earns a Smackdown from Batt O Keeffe’ »

It seems to stand to reason that with so many high profile developers (and plenty of low profile developers dotted around the country too) going to the wall as the bubble collapsed and banks called in loans outstanding, the future of PPP projects in providing social housing would fall into question.

Well according to the CIF and a few others it is dead. The whole process of PPP procurement to build social housing units is not in the interests of builders - it is not profitable to them and takes too long to deal with councillors and go through European hoops.

While my heart bleeds there are two points that stand out, developers got around social housing commitments for years via development levies which amount to over E1 billion in the accounts of various county councils and sold off their projects as high end properties, secondly they are laying off people by the bucketload and failing to pay bills to sub-contractors.

Continue reading ‘PPP Projects “No Longer Viable”’ »

Here’s a sign of the wide ripples of the crisis at Anglo Irish Bank — it apparently has pulled the plug on the financing of the 150 story Chicago Spire, which had Garrett Kelleher (owner of St Patrick’s Athletic, inter alia, an institution with its own problems) as the developer.  Although cost estimates for this building had run into $2.5 billion, Anglo Irish is apparently only the hook for about $70 million.  But as the newspaper report notes, the building apparently got planning permission on the understanding of open-ended financing from Anglo Irish, so it will be interesting to see what Kelleher has in writing if things get to that point in a row.  It does raise a question: what is the interest of the Irish taxpayer in seeing a Chicago skyscraper get finished?

From all of us here at irishelection. Now back to ur turkey!

It is thought to be the few places to do well in a recession (no doubt thanks to the E80 million that government put in the prize kitty every year) but your local bookie might be hurting. If they happen to be Celtic Bookmakers here are some of the more interesting politics bets you will get over the Christmas as you get bored of Uncle Paudie.

Ley us know if any of these are good value - the full doc of sports and celeb bets is here (apologies it is a docx file - I will PDF it the morning if someone doesnt beat me to it).

Continue reading ‘Spare 50c Guvnor?’ »

Dumped into the bailout and Christmas news cycle is the news that Aer Lingus is restarting their Shannon-Heathrow service from March.  They are attributing it to cost concessions but it would seem that they are feeling politically underclothed in the face of the Ryanair takeover bid and want to reestablish their bona fides as taking the “national interest” into account despite their commercial objectives.  Also in their plans is a new Gatwick base.  Remember that a base in England was the original plan before Belfast came along.  One wonders if the Belfast base is now endangered.

Below the fold.  Impressions: they’re still playing from behind.  The Anglo Irish bailout sets the objective of it remaining “a sound and viable institution”. But the history of banking rescues shows that you have to let some banks go under.  Or do a major balance sheet restructuring to keep the good parts of  a bank alive.  Alistair Darling took over Bradford and Bingley to wind it down, not keep it alive as a zombie bank.  There is then a laundry list of measures, one an obvious sop to the Greens (”€100m fund to support environment friendly investments”), to make it seem like the banks are giving up something in return for all the capital(€2bn each to AIB and BofI in return for only a 25% voting stake, and only on selected issues, some of which it already had under the guarantee scheme).  And no conditions relating to improved corporate governance at the banks.

Continue reading ‘Government bailout announcement’ »

Here is the unsourced Sunday Times story which claims that the government is to take an 80% stake in Anglo Irish and make large capital injections to Bank of Ireland and AIB along with a brokered merger of IL&P with EBS.  No mention of Irish Nationwide.  It’s only a few days to Christmas so if they are going to do anything, they’ll need to do it soon — unless, God Forbid, they think they can stall until 2009.  Note that they didn’t pass the NPRF legislation before adjourning the Dail so they’ll be relying on the powers in the Credit Institutions Act from a few months ago to make whatever investments they make.  We’ll update as necessary today since an announcement may come before the ISE opens tomorrow.

The Government has refused a pensioner a fuel allowance because he’s 4c over the limit.  Does everything they touch right now turn to a PR disaster?

Joe Costello:

The Minister for Social and Family Affairs has taken over the role of Scrooge this Christmas.

Henry Porter, a resident in the North Inner City and ninety years of age, applied for fuel allowance for the first time in his life because his heating bills were becoming increasingly difficult to pay.

He was refused because he was four cent over the income limit!

The Department of Social and Family Affairs stated as follows on the 5th December 2008.

“Unfortunately you do not qualify for this allowance as your household income does not satisfy the means test. The income limit in your case is €333.30 per week. Your household income of €333.34 per week exceeds this income limit. As a result you are not entitled to this allowance”.

The rest of Joe Costello’s press release is here.

Update: David Drumm steps down as Anglo Irish Chief Exec in the wake of the loan scandal. The financial regulator had knowledge for a while this was happening and the couterparty were Irish Nationwide. Anglo is now below 30c per share and one wonders when the bank will simply beforced to merge.

It is a surprise it didn’t happen sooner that the chairman of a bank which has lost 98% of its share price in the past few month resigns. Perhaps it is an insight into how Anglo became the maligned sick-man of Irish banking. Fitzpatrick’s scalp is likely to be the first casualty of the E10 billion liquidity injection, but he will not be the last.This begins the reshaping of  the Irish banking system but the vital questions remain unanswered, in whose interests will it be done?

From RTE:

In a statement released this evening, Mr Fitzpatrick said his resignation related to an €87m loan he had from the bank.

Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan has welcomed the appointment of Donal O’Connor as the new chairman of the bank.

The Minister said that Mr O’Connor, who has a substantial and impressive commercial track record, seems a natural choice to lead this financial institution in what is a challenging period for all financial institutions.

Minister Lenihan said Anglo Irish remained covered by the banking guarantee.

Continue reading ‘Sean Fitzpatrick stands down at Anglo Irish Bank’ »

In the downloadable rich text version (large file) of Building Ireland’s Smart Economy, one can check the file properties and see the author identified as Peter Clinch.  Peter Clinch is a Special Advisor (or SpAd, as Guido calls them) in the Department of an Taoiseach.  Now that’s fine.  Someone had to coordinate the different components of the document.  But it calls into question who exactly was involved in drawing up this document and how it was put together.  How can it be a joined up government if this document was just rushed together by special advisors with little input from the regular policy apparatus in departments, let alone NESC and the whole social partnership structure that is supposed to happen before these documents come out?

UPDATE: Michael Casey demolishes the report.

It’s going on at the moment.  One strange detail (no doubt among many) has emerged.  The government just adjourned the Dail for 6 weeks.  But they will need legislation to access the National Pension Reserve Fund for their capital programme for banks.  Now it turns out the proposed venture capital fund for R&D will also be getting NPRF money.   So the NPRF is now in effect an instrument of industrial policy rather than a pension-provision instrument.  Of course the government talking points will be that there is no difference.  But that’s not how most pension funds are run.  The legislation setting up the NPRF will need to be rewritten.  But when will the Dail see it?  Tempus fugit!