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Did any of you lot ever have to make something for a living?
Read more about: Fianna Fail, Government, Irish Politics
I was watching Mary Coughlan on Q&A this week and since I’m of roughly a similar vintage to Mary it struck me when she was talking about upskilling and the knowledge based economy that she’s never really had to do any of those things herself. And not just her. Just look at the work background of the members of the cabinet since 2002.
Bertie Ahern - Bertie was a book keeper for the Mater before become a TD.
Mary Harney - was very briefly a secondary school teacher between her gradution in 1976 and her appointment to the Seanad by Jack Lynch in 1977.
Michael McDowell - a barrister since 1974. Not a lot of make and do in the old law library.
Mary Coughlan - Very briefly worked as a social worker after college before taking her seat in a bye election.
John O’Donoghue - A local solicitor
Dermot Ahern - A local solicitor
Brian Cowen - A local solicitor
Noel Dempsey - Career guidance teacher
Mary Hanafin - secondary school teacher
Micheál Martin - secondary school teacher.
Séamus Brennan - an accountant
Martin Cullen - worked as a sales manager for a wine company. Seriously a wine company!
Dick Roche - Masters Degree in Public Administration. Roche worked as a public servant at the Departments of Posts & Telegraphs, Transport & Power, Finance and at the Department of Economic Planning & Development. From 1978 he was a lecturer in Public Administration and Public Finance at UCD. A man so wedded to being a public servant it is hard to believe that he talks as if he was an exemplar of the private endeavour.
Willie O’Dea - O’Dea worked as a barrister and an accountant, and lectured at University College Dublin and the University of Limerick well really NIHE Limerick.
Charlie McCreevy - did Commerce at University College Dublin and went on to become a chartered accountant
Éamon Ó Cuív - was manager of Gaeltacht Co-operative, a company involved in agricultural services including timber milling, tourism and cultural development.
Michael Smith - Farmer, so at least he knows something about getting his hands dirty.
Joe Walsh - Walsh was a researcher in the National Dairy Research Centre at Moorepark and ended up as Managing Director of Strand Dairies in Clonakilty.
So it is only the last 3 that actually know what it is like to make or produce something for a living. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.
Ó Cuív was a senior pencil pusher at an Irish speaking Co-op. He didn’t make anything. He lived off the labour of others and gave out to them if they filled in Co-op forms in the dreaded English.
So should we count him out too?
And Enda Kenny… and Pat Rabbitte?
Pat Rabbitte worked for a bit in England. Came back. Went to college. was president of USI. Went on to get a job with the ITGWU out of it. Moved from there to politics. As an aside, Rabbitte was never really trusted in the Workers’ Party because of his student background. Just goes to show, first impressions and all that…
Oh, and Enda Kenny was a school teacher for a brief period. And he STILL has that bloody ‘now Johnny, what’s that in your pocket’ look about him.
Ah, our first whataboutery contestant! Perhaps, you would be so good as to address the names above first.
I tend to agree with the initial posting. Is it not fair to assume that people locally, when planning to vote generally do so on the ‘flesh pressing appeal’ of the politico’s concerned, regardless of their professional qualifications, life expertise or indeed carisma.
McCreevy is not the most carismatic man one could ever meet, but I can guarantee you he is shrewd and highly intelligent. I don’t like this part but so are McDowell and O’Dea, despite the various Paux Pas’ of recent months and a pretty ‘colonic like’ Criminal Justice Bill, which is likely to border on infringement of rights.
As I listen to the radio as various junctures throughout the week, I grow more and more concerned that viable opposition to the current coalition is really weakening when you match-up general economic policies with the pre-election spin. I could not bring myself to vote for at least 3 of the current opposition parties regardless of how they sell themselves. Making an economically declining situation worse is the last thing this Chiquitta Republic needs at the moment.
Lets just hope the title deeds on our new properties in the accession states are in good order.
Tom
PS: Don’t you just love Enda ’spike’ Kinny. Grauig go maith!
Dan,
If there was a poin to your post, I assume therefore that you are applying it equally to your colleagues in Fine Gael/Labour - and if not, then tell us why not.
A ‘point’ even, as I know there’s a pedant about.
Fool, before we have this mad rush to move (and there is nothing to stop anyone putting up their own post on their own blog) on to the opposition are you admitting that the members of the cabinet from 2002-2007 have never known what it is to make a darn thing in their entire working lives?
Dan,
Your post made two points -
1. ‘… it struck me when she was talking about upskilling and the knowledge based economy that she’s never really had to do any of those things herself… ‘
2. ‘… it is only the last 3 that actually know what it is like to make or produce something for a living… ‘
You now ask me ‘are you admitting that the members of the cabinet from 2002-2007 have never known what it is to make a darn thing in their entire working lives?’
Seeing as that is not what your post said I don’t see the point of your question.
I’ll add three things.
The knowledge-based economy depends on doing things not necessarily making them. It was Britain, not Ireland, that was called ‘the workshop of the world’. Good luck to them.
The governments of 1997-2002 and 2002-2007 have made Ireland great again.
Fine Gael and Labour are dreadfully lacking in any governing experience. They need to upskill or, prefereably retrain for something more approriate to their level of experience.
Fool, (and oh how I feel like Mr. T when saying that) if you look at the title of my post then you will see that I asked “Did any of you lot ever have to make something for a living?” so yes I did say it in my post.
What knowledge are you suggesting that we can sell to the rest of the world? Making something such as software may result in something that it intangible but it is still a real thing that has been produced.
I think most readers would find it bizarre that anyone would still claim that it was the solely the 1997-2002 government that made Ireland great again. Even more strange is giving additional credit to the current 2002-2007 government for making Ireland great, what has been great about that last 5 years?
I would also ask how any democracy in Ireland could function if there was to be a pre-requirement that any member of a incoming government had to have previous governing experience before becoming a minister?
Hi Fool, just on your comment that Fianna Fail/PD government have made Ireland great again.
Fianna Fáil has held the Finance ministry for 56 of the last 74 years. They held it during the disastrous trade war of the 1930s. They held it in the 1950s when emigration was at its highest and soul-crushing poverty was endemic. They held it during the 1970s when the mohair suits were consolidating power in the party, and again during the Haughey years when borrowing was undertaken by the government in order to pay the wages of newly-hired civil servants, and silk shirts were flown first class from Paris.
The five year Fine Gael-Labour government of the 1980s inherited a bankrupt economy. It struggled to keep the country afloat, while at the same time preparing the groundwork for what became social partnership. The economic policies of that government were wisely accepted by Ray McSharry, who showed himself to be more than willing to continue proper fiscal policy, and because of that received the backing of Fine Gael under Alan Dukes – the so-called ‘Tallaght Strategy.’
The only time when Fianna Fáil has ever shown initiative in the finance ministry was during the Lemass years and again under Ray McSharry, who held the office for a total of twenty one months.
Since the 1970s an influential block within Fianna Fáil have used power to enrich themselves. They have made millions in the process while billions have been made by property developers who have thrown up legolands along the M50. That money could only be made if the right planning decisions were passed by the appropriate councils in the appropriate drip-feed way. This was done, but could only be done with Fianna Fáil in power.
The desire for power that drove Haughey and his fellow-travelling pimps was the desire for money. Politics was where the pay-off happened. And planning decisions have been made - and continue to be made - not in the interests of the public, but in the interests of a very small, and very rich, slice of Irish life.
We have yet to see a Fine Gael / Labour government fuck up the economy as spectacularly as Fianna Fáil did in the 1970s and early 1980s, as they had done before in the 1940s and 50s, and have done again from 2002. The ‘boomer’ times, as Bertie calls them, are fuelled by half a trillion euro in mortgages secured to a worrying degree by PAYE employment in the construction industry and ancillary services. The borrowing is paying for the jobs, man, just as it did with the Charlie Haughey civil servant influx of 1981.
Ben,
Your final paragraph accurately notes that it is the confidence of individuals and companies to decide to invest, and the studied calculations of bankers to lend for that investment, which powers an economy.
The perceived abuses of plannning powers in the past by elements in the main parties at county council level were able to happen because our ‘planning system’ as copied from Britain’s 1947 Act unwisely assumed that technocrats and councillors could better the judgements of those investors, entrepreneurs and financiers. That gave us our Ballymuns and our Limerick council ghettos, as well as an embarrassingly trivial degree of venality in some instances.
Dan,
The reason why the opposition parties have such scant ministerial experience is because the electors haven’t returned a Fine Gael-led government for twenty years or so. That is the issue, and Fine Gael is slow in grasping the reasons for that, and adapting. They don’t appear to stand for anything, other than denigrating Fianna Fáil people. Which was the point of your post.
What do you do for a living Dan?
Well I’m glad you accept that it was the economic policies of the 1982-87 fine Gael/Labour government that put Ireland on the right track - and not those Fianna Fáil / PD ‘boomers.’ And as for confidence investment - that’s a joke.
In most economies, an entrepreneur goes to a bank, gets a loan, sets up a business, and from the profits of that business, buys a house.
In Ireland, we go to the bank, get a loan, buy a house, and sit in it. Brian Cowen calls these people entrepreneurs. apparently, you do too.
In Dublin, we now have businesses CLOSING DOWN because they can make more money by selling the land to speculators. That’s jobs leaving the economy in order to cash in on the property scam.
how is that in any way a sound basis for an economy? Businesses closing down to sell the land they’re on?
The Irish property market is one huge pyramid scheme, and that’s why the main players have already got out. In 1995, the average house price was one and a half times the average industrial wage - that figure is now thirteen times the average industrial wage. Ireland’s economy since 2001/02 has relied to a worrying degree, and has been allowed to rely, on hundreds of thousands of people going out and spending a large proportion of their projected disposable income over the next thirty years all in one go. Sound investment and studied calculation my arse.
Oh, and 1997 was the last time Fine Gael and Labour were in power, not twenty years or so.
Fool, if you think that planners are responsible for all or even most of our bad planning decisions then you really haven’t been paying attention. Blaney of FF was housing minister when Ballymun was up and it was his decision to shift people off the housing list into Ballymun rather than the original plan to offer the apartments to the best existing tenants that made the place the instant ghetto it was. I think whoever went in there it would have proven a bad idea but we would have had time to make efforts to correct or alleviate the mistakes if the original plan had been used.
Also, Fool since you are politically so wise what possible means could there be for FG candidates to ever get governing experience before getting elected to government?
As for what I do, I’m an electronic engineering graduate who has worked in software engineering and project management positions in the private sector in the US, Japan and Ireland in software development since 1992 and in the last 2 years have taken time out to work in the public sector as a researcher with the intention of returning to the private sector after renewing my skills and expertise. What do you do?
Ben,
Where did Isay that ‘it was the economic policies of the 1982-87 fine Gael/Labour government that put Ireland on the right track’?
Dan,
I work in the public sector in an administrative role. You seemed above to be accepting that Ireland has made a remarkable recovery over the past two decades or so. Are you?
Where did I indicate that Fool?
Dan,
Where you wrote ‘I think most readers would find it bizarre that anyone would still claim that it was the solely the 1997-2002 government that made Ireland great again.’
p.s And I’m an Arts graduate (and postgraduate) having studied public administration during time spent in Britain.
Dan,
I overlookeded an earlier question from you - ‘what possible means could there be for FG candidates to ever get governing experience before getting elected to government?’
By getting the electorate to actually vote them into government from time to time. Our democracy is the poorer for not having a credible opposition. If a party wants to represent people at the Cabinet table, it has to have a clear-headed sense of what people need, what they want, what is good for them, and what it is possible to deliver. Electoral history seems to prove that Fianna Fáil does this balancing act better than the others.
I was using your own words. And I might easily as when was Ireland great before? Ireland had a good economic performance in the 1960s, but only good mind, when FF under Lemass ditched their entire ideology of protectionism in exchange for opening the country up. As Ben pointed out it was the FG budgetary policy that McSharry implemented, not FF own platform that they ran the 1987 election on.
As for my question, you are saying that FG shouldn’t get elected because they lack governmental experience (not saying I agree with you), and that in order to get that experience they should be getting elected in order to get that experience that is the reason they shouldn’t be elected. Which is an interesting and self serving piece of circular logic on your part. I suspect your time in the UK has left you somewhat bereft of how our system works here.
Dan,
‘I suspect your time in the UK has left you somewhat bereft of how our system works here.’
On the contrary. I believe my experience in the UK in the 1980s and early 1990s gives me some very useful insights into the similarities and differences characterising the two states.
As your party Fine Gael seems incapable of getting itself into a position to govern, I think it is you and your lot who are a little bereft.
Fool, you still aren’t answering my question.
Hi Fool, sorry fornot getting back sooner. It’s true, you did not say that “‘it was the economic policies of the 1982-87 fine Gael/Labour government that put Ireland on the right track”.
What you did say was that “Your final paragraph accurately notes that it is the confidence of individuals and companies to decide to invest, and the studied calculations of bankers to lend for that investment, which powers an economy.”
now, I was just trying to save your blushes, but there you go.
venture capital investment in Ireland in 2006 amounted to a total of €192 million - about 0.024% of the total of Irish investment in overseas commercial property.
Irish individuals have the confidence to invest in Ireland alright. about 0.024% confidence.
Wouldn’t you rather have a cabinet qualified in law, accountancy, public admin and various “people-based” skills than, say, a good plumber?
The kinds of skills ministers have seem a bit more relevant that a manual labour one.
A cabinet that had a complete absence of someone with knowledge of the law or how an economy works would of course be a bad thing. However, one made up solely of lawyers, say, can’t really be expected to know one end of a knowledge economy from another. And it would seem that it is solely the service and dependent industries that are represented in the government at present. It is hard to see how the vast bulk of the current cabinet have any idea what it is look to be an employee of Motorola or P&G, since their professional experience has been completely different.
And a good plumber would know what it is to run a business as the best plumbers are self employed.
Ben,
What the marketing men in some small banks call ‘venture capital’ is, as you have noticed, a tiny proportion of the total investment powering our economy. All the more incredible that the trade unions went to europe trying to block the enhanced BES measures that Brian Cowen announced last budget day. On a more serious note, I’m sure you’re fully aware that our economy is almost two-thirds services, and that the process of creative destruction eliminates some lower value activity but that process also creates the space for the emergence of higher level activities which will satisfy the higher aspirations of our well-educated people, as well as our immigrants. Having said that, there’s never any room for complaceny on costs, especially those levied by public sector monopolies which have lagged the efficiency gains of the private sector.
Dan,
Sadly, Lemass had found that the indigenous class failed to take the opportunity offered by protection to improve their productivity.
You ask, ‘when was Ireland great before?’ When the Irish people have been free to get on with it, instead of looking to some old sovereign, aristocrat, or ideologue, for permission to manage our affairs to serve our own national interest. It also helps that we are no longer obliged to be in lockstep with the sterling zone.
Dan,
The sentence above should read
Sadly, Lemass had found that the indigenous business class failed to take the opportunity offered by protection to improve their productivity.
Dan,
And a good plumber would know what it is to run a business as the best plumbers are self employed.
Is that why Fine Gael’s PPBs in 2002 likened the FF/PD coalition to plumbers and car mechanics.
In what context was that said?
Can’t you remember?
I don’t recall it don’t you?
Dan,
After positng my earlier comment, a doubt entered my mind as to whether it was Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil which depicted the other as rogue plumbers and cowboy mechanics in their 2002 election broadcasts. Whichever it was, we know how the electorate voted.
Anyway Dan, you began by asking in a critical manner if any of the 2002- cabinet ever had to ‘make something for a living’. You then acknowledged that three of them did indeed know how to ‘make or produce something’. To your own credit you later expanded your terms of reference to include intangible product, but seem to exclude legal, educational, financial and management services. You now say that what it’s really all about is running a business, but don’t appear to recognize that this is what most barristers and ‘local solicitor(s)’ do in fact do.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought John O’Donoghue, Dermot Ahern and Brian Cowen were all barristers, rather than solicitors.
That will have to be my final contribution to this particular thread.
I believe I asked in a pointed rather than critical way. Having worked in software I never excluded making software which is after all only relatively intangible. And I mentioned running a business in the context of the plumbers and mechanics that Pidge had referred to as lacking people skills which I don’t think they would. Services are not something you make, no one who has worked in manufacturing or a production environment in any place that makes something in whatever capacity would regard services as “making something”
And J O’D, DA and BC are not barristers, they’re just common or garden town solicitors.