Best of Luck at the Irish Blog Awards

All the best to Irish Election in their various categories at the Irish Blog Awards tomorrow night and to Cian and Simon for the Best Contribution to the Irish Blogosphere category. Dublin Opinion shares consideration for the News/Current Affairs slot, but it’s more than enough for us to get shortlisted, so I’m happy for Irish Election to win in that category (sorry Squid) as well as Best Political Blog. Also if Irish Election wins News/Current Affairs Dublin Opinion and The Limerick Blogger will get a bit of the reflected glory, so its all good.

And now, for the laugh, here’s something I wrote last week, but didn’t post here as it seemed that the PD leader was already getting enough publicity.

Having dinner with your in-laws can be tricky. Think of that bit in Annie Hall when Alvin (Woody Allen) sits down to dinner with Annie’s (Diane Keaton) family for the first time and notices the under-the-breath anti-semitic invective coming from her aged grandmother.

Typically dinner with my in-laws isn’t as tense as that. I’ve known them for a long time and there’s usually good humour around the dinner table. Take last Sunday for example when we gathered in their house to celebrate my father-in-law being discharged from hospital after a short stay. He’s a gregarious individual, full of stories and anecdotes. On Sunday he started telling me all about his UCD days; who had taught him and those now famous individuals who attended the university at the same time.

However, after going through a list of several prominent Irish people he told me this story about Michael McDowell, Taniste, Minister for Justice and current leader of the Progressive Democrats.

On the first floor of Earlsfort Terrace – the home of UCD at the time - there were a number of oak lined common rooms. My father-in-law was in one for an L&H debate and the room was pretty full as the gathered students waited for the debate to begin. Behind them they heard hob-nailed boots pounding on the wooden floor and the back door of the room opened. Then they saw that the pounding was coming from a young man in an army uniform who came up to the podium to address the room.

The young man was Michael McDowell.

‘For anyone interested in joining the Pearse Regiment‘ said the young McDowell, referring to a UCD branch of the FCA, ‘can you please come to room…’ which is as far as he got before being drowned out by sounds of “Sieg Heil!”.

Exasperated at this he then shouted out ‘you lot are only interested in women!’ As most of the students in the room where male, they gave a mighty cheer.

Once things settle down, however, he said that anyone interested in joining the FCA can have a look at an exhibition of the FCA’s armoury in another designated part of the college. My Father-in-Law and few of his friends were curious enough to go along.

And what did the FCA armoury consist of?

Two old rifles and rusting pistol.

My Father-in-law didn’t join up.

It turns out that there are plenty of tales of McDowell’s UCD student days and his regular sporting of his FCA uniform at college events.

According to a Sunday Business Post profile of the recently appointed Minister for Justice in 2002 the stories of his attending the L and H debate in uniform are legendary:

“A time-honoured UCD story has him addressing the L and H debating society in his FCA uniform. This was around the time when student radicals such as Ruairi Quinn and Kevin Myers were occupying buildings and indulging in other such subversive activity, and shortly before another contemporary — Gerry Stembridge — chaired an L and H meeting wearing a motorcycle helmet and eating a bag of chips. The attraction to military attire seems to have been a strong one for him at the time; senior counsel Kevin Feeney once told a Gonzaga past versus present debate that the “first time I ever saw a Doc Marten was when Michael McDowell stood on my face.””

Well, this is the first time I’d heard it (although when I told the story to a friend this week he told me that Frank McDonald, the Environment correspondent of the Irish Times and co-attendee of UCD at the time, is also fond of telling the story).

But in the light of McDowell’s inaugural address as party leader at the Progressive Democrats convention last Sunday I find several things to compare between the position taken in that speech and the idea of McDowell encouraging students to join an irrelevant and outmoded pathetically small reserve army force which, when it came to the crunch had no resource with which to act.

Please bear with me and, in order to see this you may need to adjust your satirical goggles to the right setting.

Firstly, the most significant announcement that McDowell made is that if elected as part of Fianna Fail/PD coalition that it will lower both the standard and upper rate of tax by 2% by 2012. It will also reform of the stamp duty system to benefit first time buyers (and resellers) and increase the old age pension.

These are significant promises. Much comment has been made of the fact that the PDs, traditionally seen as the Tax Cutting party, were upstaged by Labour when Pat Rabbitte made the surprise announcement of promising to reduce the standard rate of tax to 18%.

Michael Taft of the Notes from the Front points out the potential pitfalls of that announcement.

“The rising costs of Labour’s tax cut proposals will be, over five years, approximately €6.1 billion (each year the cost will increase – by 9% on the basis of the last five years – since there will be rising incomes and more people entering the tax band). That, right away, gobbles up a majority of the ‘extra €11 billion’ [The figure the Department of Finance predicts tax revenue will grow to over the next three years]. But that’s the situation on current trends.”

Michael’s post and comments provide a very good discussion on Labour’s surprise policy.

But the PD suggested cuts are even more expensive and depend even more on maintaining of current trends.

As Marc Coleman pointed out in the Irish Times yesterday (subs required), the PDs presume that the nominal growth rate (the value of goods and services produced by the economy) will grow by 8%. This is still in line with ESRI predictions.

But the PDs also presume that tax revenues will grow by 10%. Now I’m not an economist, so I’m relying entirely on Coleman for the next point, something that Michael Taft may take issue with, but Coleman argues that up to now:

“revenue growth has been broadly in line with economic growth. Only in the property boom years since 2003 has it substantially exceeded it. Without this boom revenue growth would have fallen short of economic growth. In some years - 2001 and 2002 - it has been significantly lower.”

Michael McDowell said that the tax cuts were fully costed, but clearly their calculations are based on what it is that is currently keeping our tiger economy going, the behemoth of construction. Considering that the Irish Property market is considerably over valued and, while not likely to crash overnight will, as with all bubbles, suffer a significant slump, it seems wreckless to put the economy in harms way by relying on it so completely.

With the latest MRBI/Irish Times poll predicting a 1% percent share of the vote the PDs on their own are as significant a force as an FCA regiment, and with this tax proposal they have the equivalent of old moded rusty rifles in their stockade.
I don’t have the time now to go into the other strand of their election campaign, the broken down revolver of their environmental policy. I’ll leave that up to Alex Klemm at the excellent Progressive Gardener. In fact, everyone should read his blog.