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

“15 months ago, when my Government came into office, we made it one of our top priorities to restore Ireland’s international reputation,” The Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, told an international medical conference at the National Conference Centre in June.

Kenny and his Government tend to take every opportunity to bang the drum on the reputation issue and their collective determination to restore it internationally in every aspect. Yet they now appear unfazed by the spectacle of one of the most senior members of the Cabinet, Minister for Health and Fine Gael Deputy Leader, Dr. James Reilly, being cited in Stubbs Gazette for debt default and failure to comply with a High Court Order to discharge that debt.

 It’s unprecedented. It’s embarrassing. It potentially creates a tagline that will follow the Minister and his colleagues – The ‘Stubbs Gazette Government’. It doesn’t do much for Ireland’s international reputation – or with the citizens of this state – to have a minister in situ who is in breach of a High Court order. In short, it’s unacceptable.

Continue reading ‘No apology from debt default Minister for Stubbs Gazette debacle – but Government unfazed’ »

As the Dail rises for its summer break for the second time since Fine Gael and Labour took office, the seismic election of February 2011 now seems like a long time ago. It isn’t of course. It’s only 14 months since this government took power with the biggest parliamentary majority in the history of the state. In its early months it was  bolstered by the goodwill of most citizens  coupled with relief amongst many that the political stranglehold of the Fianna Fail party for several generations was finally broken with the ‘soldiers of destiny’, and the Green Party which they’d brought down with them, destined for the political boneyard. Continue reading ‘Old election promises constrain government’s capacity to perform – but they brought it on themselves’ »

Below: the main findings of a survey of 2,000 citizens conducted on behalf of the European Parliament on why Irish voters cast their ballots the way they did in the referendum on the Fiscal Treaty. The survey report is available on the EP website.

http://www.europarl.ie/ressource/static/files/Post%20referendum%20survey%20on%20Fiscal%20Compact/eb_flash_2012_irish_referendum_synthesis_en_v2.pdf

Continue reading ‘Fear of economic consequences led to ‘Yes’ vote on Fiscal Treaty – European Parliament Survey results’ »

Germany’s man at the ECB, Jörg Asmussen, during a tough speech in Athens today:

It is difficult to ask voters in a country where average public sector wages are around €1000 per month, like in Estonia or Slovakia, to lend to a country where those wages are on average around €3000. The same holds true for emerging countries outside the euro area who participate in the financial assistance for Greece via the IMF. Some of those even went through very painful but ultimately successful adjustment programmes themselves; take Brazil for example.

Fact: Average earnings per week in the Irish public sector are around €900 (source: CSO employment costs survey). Whether that’s “fair” or “meaningful” is a separate row. The news is that the ECB thinks that it’s high for a country dependent on the kindness of official creditors.

Bloomberg News story on Ireland’s lessons for Spain –

Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen said on June 11 that Spain should split up some lenders, with some loans dispatched to a bad bank, as Ireland did.

Actual quote from Finnish PM via Bloomberg News 3 days earlier –

“The unhealthy banks should be brought down or some banks should be possible to chop up” so that the healthy parts continue and the rest ends in a so-called bad bank, Finnish Prime MinisterJyrki Katainen said in an interview in Norway today. “There must be a possibility to restructure the banking sector because it doesn’t make sense to recapitalize banks which are not capable of running.”

Ireland spent 2 years, in tandem with NAMA’s existence — insisting that it couldn’t shut down or chop up its banks, and instead that the only option was to keep putting money into them. Indeed, Patrick Honohan recently acknowledged, although it didn’t get enough attention, that the infamous guarantee was itself an obstacle to restructuring the banks.

There are lessons for Spain from Ireland, but they amount to doing the opposite of what Ireland did, not some variation on it.  It also indicates a need to be wary of Prime Ministers with an unseemly focus on attending soccer matches.

Obviously there are quite a few places where the result is being discussed but for the sake of completeness we’ll open a thread here. I was struck just now to see on RTE Norah Casey (being interviewed by Miriam along with Mary Lou) to say that we need a convene a new style of think tank with “business leaders, farmers, retail, and professions … and maybe a few economists.” Apparently that’s a representative sample of Ireland.

Whether we vote Yes or No on the fiscal treaty referendum, we’ll still have a shambles of a property market when it’s over. With the Central Bank recently publishing new data about the weakness in residential mortgages, its useful to look at one of the key drivers of the property market i.e. valuations.

Continue reading ‘If NAMA was a bank’ »

With just four days to go, the last opinion polls of the referendum campaign show a consistent trend in favour of a ‘Yes’ to the Fiscal Treaty. As RTE news reported last night, a Behaviour and Attitudes poll for the Sunday Times shows 45% ‘Yes’, up three points since their last poll; 30% ‘No’, also up three points with 24% ‘undecided’.  Take out the undecideds and that’s 60/40 in favour.

Same result for the Millard Brown Lansdowne poll  in the Sunday Independent. This poll records a 42% ‘Yes’, up  five points from their last outing; 28% ‘No’, up four points; and 31% ‘Undecided, yielding another 60/40 in favour.

The Red C /Sunday Business Post poll confirms the general trend. Here, 49% intend to vote ‘Yes’; 35% ‘No’ and undecideds  come to 16%, indicating an overall  58/42  ‘Yes’.

The Taoiseach’s ‘address to the nation’ on RTE this evening is, no doubt, intended to shore up the ‘Yes’ vote amongst those constituencies where it is already a ‘wrap’ – Fine Gael party supporters, the farmers, industry and commerce, public sector workers – as well as persuading the remaining ‘undecideds’ likely to vote on Thursday into the ‘yes’ camp. Continue reading ‘I’m all ears waiting for Enda to convince me to vote ‘Yes’ to the Fiscal Treaty referendum’ »

The Government’s claims that EU leaders agreed not to renegotiate the Fiscal Compact – due to be voted on on May 31st – have been met with silence from French and EU officials. German newspaper Suebdeutsche Zeitung claims that the French want to keep renegotiation on the table as a bargaining chip to gain German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s acceptance of Eurobonds.

Hollande wants but does not seem to decide whether he makes euro bonds a condition that France ratified the Compact on the new EU fiscal debt rules. This is the threat of a new president to let the fiscal pact fail, still in the room.”….

Just three weeks to go to the referendum and the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ campaigns are still looking for the ignition switch that will engage the public. Thus far, the debate has been confined to politicos of right and left with precious little direct engagement by civic groups, so much a part of the colour and drama of past campaigns.

The Government parties’ campaign centres around words like ‘certainty’, ‘stability’ and ‘investor confidence’ as well as tormenting their ‘No’ vote opponents with questions about where they will get the money, at a reasonable rate of interest, if Ireland shuts itself off from access to ESM funding in the wake of a ‘No’ result?

The ‘No’ campaign has been dominated by Sinn Fein. The array of socialist groups such as the ULA, independents like Luke Ming Flanagan and Shane Ross,( who has yet to declare if he’s ‘Yes’ or ‘No’,) play occasional bit parts. The Socialist Workers Party’s Kieran Allen appears to spend much of his waking hours in TV and radio studios mostly saying the same thing – cancel bank debt, default as Greece has, tax the rich – as well as needling Government Ministers about where they propose to get the 11bn euro that Ireland will be obliged to contribute to the ESM if this referendum is passed? Continue reading ‘Fiscal Treaty debate is too narrow – unknowns and uncertainties on ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ sides’ »

It’s an interesting day on the Irish Times opinion page as Vincent Browne and Terence McDonough set out the anti-Yes position on the fiscal treaty, specifically regarding whether Ireland will still have recourse to the IMF outside the European Stability Mechanism. It’s clear that technically, as an IMF member country, it will. But leave aside for a second the question of whether IMF policies will leave it enough room to cater for a rogue Eurozone state like Ireland in that eventuality. What about our existing obligations under EU treaties, as codified in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (“Lisbon Treaty’):

Continue reading ‘The IMF option sailed with the Lisbon treaty’ »

According to the latest national opinion poll in the Sunday Times, up to half the electorate doesn’t understand what the Stability Treaty, on which we are being asked to vote in a few weeks time , is about.  The opinion polls suggest that about 30 % of the electorate are committed to a ‘Yes’ vote,  slightly ahead of the number who will definitely vote ‘No’, with up to 40% still undecided as to which way they will cast their ballot when it comes to it. The committed ‘Yes’ vote should sound alarm bells for the government and pro-treaty activists: at this pre-campaign stage it would need to be a lot higher to guarantee a positive result. The government parties thus have a lot to do to convince a majority of the electorate that a ‘Yes’ to this Treaty, now positively renamed the ‘Stability Treaty’, is in the national interest and our own personal interests as well. Continue reading ‘Should we really vote ‘Yes’ to the Stability Treaty?’ »

The IMF has published a self-evaluation of its massive lending program to Iceland — a program which Iceland has now exited. Although a little technical, it’s an interesting read, but of course the people who should read it — the Irish Department of Finance types who mocked Iceland in 2009-2010 — won’t. There are two take-aways from the report. One is what Iceland did about the banks; that ship has sailed for us now but it’s no harm understanding even after the fact how bad the choices were. The other is how to deal with the overhang of personal debt, which is still a big issue for Ireland and one where informed choices can be made. Quotes below the fold. Short version: no blanket guarantees, no pari passu rubbish about senior unsecured creditors, no NAMA, and an aggressive approach to reducing domestic corporate and household debt burdens (update: the IMF makes the Iceland case of household mortgage debt a centerpiece of their Spring 2012 World Economic Outlook).

Continue reading ‘Iceland, again’ »

After 3000+ pages of the Mahon Tribunal Report, one finding is clear: it’s all the fault of Denis O’Brien. Soon it will come out that he was in the room on the night of the bank guarantee. Anyway, following quickly on the Sunday Independent’s line, the Irish Times has another anti-Denis scoop:
A FRENCH company has claimed it was denied the opportunity to make an offer for Irish company Siteserv which businessman Denis O’Brien is poised to acquire this week for €45 million. The Altrad group, which owns companies in the same areas of business as Siteserv, said at the weekend that it had been prepared to offer €60 million for the Irish firm. But it was effectively denied the opportunity because its representative was told the Irish group was not for sale.

Now that all may be, but is a little Googling too much to expect? Here’s Davy’s summary of the deal, and they should know as they were involved in it:

Under the terms of the disposal, IBRC  [Anglo Irish Bank] has agreed to accept payment of an amount which is less than the total debt owed by the group in full and final discharge of its indebtedness. This agreement was critical to the proposed acquisition by Millington. [DOB vehicle]

In other words, the firm has a huge debt to pay and it can’t pay it. So to quote from one firm’s version of the e-mails that it sent with an offer price for the equity is meaningless. The Irish Times needs to explain what the French firm’s bid — which somehow missed the window where the company and IBRC were discussing what to do — would have done with the firm’s debt. You’d think by now in Ireland there’d be an understanding that legacy debt is a dealbreaker. Apparently not.

Before I begin I should point out my expertise is not in nuclear physics so this is not an “expert” opinion but neither is it a vested interest opinion. Whether or not Ireland adapts Nuclear power will have the same effect on my life as it will on yours.

At 14:46 Japanese standard time on the 11th of March 2011 a magnitude 9 earthquake struck off the coast at Tōhoku. The earthquake and the ensuing Tsunami took the lives of 15,850 people. Television pictures flew around the world, showing utter devastation, with flood waters racing through the countryside, effortlessly sweeping aside cars and buildings in its path. It was, a relentless tide of destruction. Yet Tohoku is not a name that will live in infamy, instead, one year on, the name we associate most with this disaster is Fukushima.
Continue reading ‘How I stopped worrying and learned to love Nuclear’ »