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Ronan Lyons on Ireland’s Economic Woes and the Global Downturn
Ronan Lyons of Daft shows just how unconnected our woes are to the global downturn. It’s even understandable to non-economists.
Green Party Convention Votes to Campaign on Yes Vote for Lisbon by a Single Ballot
The Green Party will officially campaign for a Yes vote in the second Lisbon treaty referendum following a vote on the issue at their special party convention today. They didn’t vote on their position in Government, but they discussed it. The membership was asked to vote on whether they should support a No campaign, this [...]
The NRA and their “missing email”
A report in the motoring supplement of the Irish Times on Wednesday told of how The Dublin Port Tunnel will not be taking part in a major European tunnel safety assessment scheme because there was a “missing email between the National Roads Authority” and the group carrying out the report. It was headlined “No Record [...]
An Bord Snip: How the West was Done
Dublin-centric is too light a phrase for the Snip report. Rural Ireland is nailed – and I say this as someone born and bred in Blanchardstown, west Dublin. Many of the local services and State initiatives that combine to sustain the West are singled out for particular attention.
An Bord Snip: Agriculture
Written by Niall of Associate Notes – The report on this section begins by outlining the role of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, (D/AFF) before going establishing that the D/AF&F accounts for €3.3bn of expenditure in 2009. It claims that the D/AF&F and its associated agencies employ circa 6,200. The Bord is proposes [...]
An Bord Snip: The Court System
Written by Aoife Carroll Barrister-at-law (and for full disclosure, member of the Labour Party) – The Snip report makes various recommendations about the courts structure and the administration of the courts which, as a barrister, I read with significant interest. There is to be savings of €23.2 million in relation to the organisation of the [...]
An Bord Snip: The HSE
The HSE gets 10 pages to itself in the report, on top of the 6 pages given to the department of health. The report in general recommends that citizens pay for services they are currently entitled to – this comes on top of a reduction in the number of people who are entitled to these [...]
An Bord Snip: Foreign Affairs
Savings of €41.7m have been identified from the €800m current annual expenditure. 65 staff should be cut according to the proposals. How it would be done: Rationalisation of the overseas embassies by reducing their number from 75 to 55. Reduce pay grade of Ambassadors from Assistant Secretary level to principal officer level in all cases [...]
An Bord Snip: Enterprise, Trade and Employment
Written by Rob Heigh of Gazette Headline items: Departmental snips will lead to €238m in “savings” and 600 redundancies – respectively meaning, in other words, reductions of 12% of budget and 11% of workforce. Recommendations: All science, technology and innovation funding channeled through one pipeline to remove what they identify as the duplication of resources [...]
Download Links for Snip Report
We hear the Finance.gov.ie site crashed. Volume 1 85 page Executive Summary Volume 2 – 200 page Detailed Accounte
An Bord Snip Summary (3pm)
Take this all as unconfirmed confirmations – we’ll be updating, correcting and adding context as we go through the report. Assume responsibility for Coillte Public Service; Pay cuts, cuts in pensions specifically accelerated pensions which gardaí and judges are on. Raise pension qualification age (unconfirmed whether or not this relates to private sector also). Examine [...]
Links related to An Bord Snip. Irish Times frontpage RTE on IMPACT Press release. Various bits of coverage from the Independent Article about the merging of city councils from Cork Politics Progressive Economy – Blog from left-leaning economists, post expected later today. Irish Ecconomy – Blog from centrist and centre-right economists, post also expected later. [...]
Pre-release: The Emerging Details of Snip
Warning: This thread will be constantly updated by various writers as details emerge. Readers are free to point out anything we’ve missed in the comments section and we’ll subsume them into the post. It is written somewhat on-the-fly, so apologies for potentially poor English, we post first then edit. – The Irish Times and Independent [...]
The Green Party, Boyle expeditions, Snip and Taking a Stand
Dan Boyle was on point duty for the Greens once again yesterday. Himself and his party colleague in the Seanad, Deirdre De Burca voted against the Government move to guillotine the final stage of the Criminal Justice Act last night. How very noble of them. Then Boyle, a senator – i.e. someone the general public [...]
Supposedly, missing email puts Port Tunnel out of major EU wide safety test
The Dublin Port Tunnel has been left out of a major, independent European tunnel safety assessment scheme – allegedly because of a missing e-mail between the National Roads Authority (NRA) and the European Tunnel Assessment Programme, Eurotap. Does anyone else think this is a possibly life-threatening version of the “but Miss, I left my copy [...]
Irish Election Reporting on An Bord Snip – Wanted: Help.
We’re going to try something new on Irish Election for the release of the An Bord Snip report. It’s expected at some point in the next few days, probably early Thursday (tomorrow) or early Friday. Irish Election has a community of commenters that most media outlets don’t – that’s what makes this site worth reading, [...]
