In a great day for Irish and European democracy, the Irish people, on a higher turnout than Nice II, rejected the illegitimate and anti-democratic Lisbon Treaty by 53.4% to 46.6%. In doing so, they have struck a blow for freedom and against remote, unaccountable and undemocratic rule by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. They have shown great courage in the face of an Establishment media blitz by Independent Newspapers, the Irish Times, the Sunday Business Post, The Tribune and others who bombarded us with a relentless torrent of black propaganda about the “disaster” a no vote would be for Ireland. As I pointed out on a previous post, the final day before polling was marked by a disgraceful attempt at scaremongering on the front-page of the Irish Independent, claiming that a “No” vote would accelerate rising unemployment. It is interesting that while the margins were not as large on the day, the poll on the Independent’s own website and the story’s comment pages were deluged by angry criticism of the story and support for a “No” vote.

This outcome cannot be separated from the context in which it takes place, which relates to one of my biggest grievances against our party-political culture - namely the culture of the “cosy-consensus”, in which like the ideological equivalent of a business-cartel cornering the market by refusing to compete with one another on price, the political-elites insist on refusing to compete with one another on a certain set of political issues. The Irish elites insisted - like with immigration - on refusing to represent the huge segment of public opinion that has historically opposed closer European political integration. Never has that been more true that now, with the elites continuing to display open contempt for our decision. Only yesterday, Una Claffey, former government spokesperson, argued that in Lisbon “we” had gotten all we wanted. Who is the “we” in this? This mantra continues to be repeated by members of the FF elite, who insisted during the referendum campaign that “we” had gotten all our “redlines” in the negotiations. Again who are “we”? The answer is clear - they are referring to themselves - the elite. Never in the history of Irish politics as an independent country have our political-class be so out of touch with the people they claim to represent.

It is infuriating to me, as a “no” voter, to hear Barroso, Wallstrom, Polish PM Donald Tusk, French Secretary for Europe Jouyet, German Foreign Minister Steinmeier and others insist that the ratification of the Treaty must go ahead. On the contrary it must not go ahead, and most certainly must not apply to Ireland in its current form. The Irish people have said “no” and if the elites persist in trying to railroad us into ratification by trying to isolate us by getting the other 26 governments and parliaments to ratify Lisbon, then it will only reinforce Irish and European public opinion of Brussels as a remote and anti-democratic project. While a pro-European myself, I had not choice but to vote no due to a number of factors including those I have described in the previous post. The French and Dutch peoples have already said no. Now the Irish have said no. You don’t need to be a rocket-scientist to deduce how the British would vote had they been given the opportunity. When the Irish politicians tell the other states should continue ratification, what they really mean is that the governments and parliaments of those countries should do so - for not one of them will dare put this to a referendum in their respective countries due to the certainty of a “no” vote. Sarkozy said as much in a meeting with journalists some months ago.

Our decision on the current package is final. Another tarted-up copy of the rejected formula rejected by the Dutch, French, and now Irish is a non-runner. We Irish are tiring of the “permanent revolution” of European integration. We want to remain in the EU and the euro, but not at any price. The recent reintroduction of the annual 1916 parades have served to remind the Irish people of what was sacrificed for our freedom, and I believe a richer Ireland is now more self-confident and inclined to defend its sovereignty in a way that was not the case in the past. If they come back to us again with a new package, we must insist it be radically different - at least in its application to Ireland - from the one we have rejected. That must include the deletion of the self-amending Article 48 that allows for treaty ratification without referenda, the retention of our Commissioner and voting weight on the Council, an opt-out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights like Poland and the UK obtained, and the retention of our national vetoes on issues like energy, public health, and tourism and sport. Anything less deserves the same answer we gave on June 12th.

One of Bertie Ahern’s home stretch events today was to launch the Dublin Airport Authority’s plan for Dublin Airport City.   Not to put too fine a point on it, this seems like one of the crazier proposals to have emerged over the last year, and symptomatic of much of what is wrong with governance and regional planning in Ireland.  One wonders where the Greens and rural Fianna Fail TDs are when something like is going on. 

Needless to say, Bertie loves the idea –

The DAA masterplan reflects a level of ambition and vision that is entirely appropriate to the standing that Ireland now enjoys as one of the success stories of this globalised era.

Located in the vicinity of Europe’s eighth largest international airport, and served directly by the new metro and our growing motorway network, this exciting new business zone can grow into a dynamic new economic hub for the Greater Dublin area.

It also has real potential to contribute to a strengthening of the all-island economy through its strategic location on the Dublin-Belfast economic corridor.

Dublin Airport City is expected to include 600,000 square metres of high quality, next generation office space, accompanied by a further 40,000 square metres of retail, hotel and conference facilities.  Phased development over a 15-20 year period will deliver a range of business services to rival any business campus, anywhere in the world.

Bertie pitched the plan as being consistent with the National Spatial Strategy and the National Development Plan, and it also claimed to be included with Fingal County Council’s development plan.   But consider some of the potential problems with this proposal:

• It makes the Dublin Airport Authority, already an operator of a shopping mall with an airport attached (a la Heathrow), into a local property developer and operator of a business park.  How can this be consistent with its supposed specialization in, er, airports?
• They are neither the first or the last to have an idea of an airport city.  It’s being done all over the world.  See especially the Arab states of the Gulf.  Indeed one suspects that the idea for the airport city was developed by expensive consultants who had worked on similar plans for Bahrain and Dubai.
• It concentrates yet more development on the M1 corridor, already the most highly developed part of the country and severely congested.
• The underlying logic is incoherent.  Bertie sold it as another “cluster” like the IFSC, the idea being that businesses can gain from being close together.  But Brian Cowen’s proposal to extend the IFSC to Belfast shows that clusters don’t have to involve physical proximity.
• It induces more development around Dublin Airport.   This risks the same mistake as Heathrow, setting up the noise headaches and lack of terminal and runway space that have made Heathrow such a nightmare.  Indeed, it risks dissipating one of Dublin’s key advantages over Heathrow, the fact that is on the north-south axis of the city and not east-west: planes land into or against the prevailing westerly, which sends planes right over central London on the Heathrow approach, but keeps them away from the most heavily populated areas of Dublin.  But not if there’s a new Dublin Airport City acting as a magnet for people and buildings.
• It creates a conflict of interest for the DAA.  Use land for airport space or property development?  It might prefer the quick capital gains of the latter.
• It makes nonsense of the government’s commitment to spread development to other regions.  As it happens, Bertie left the DAA launch event for Buncrana to visit the site of a new “decentralised” government office and from there to open Niall Blaney’s new office.  So Donegal gets a few bureaucratic and political crumbs while Dublin gets a new city. 

There’s little hope of the political system generating much in the way of careful consideration of whether the Airport City is a good idea.  Maybe Michael O’Leary will lead the opposition.

Perhaps out of worry that the High Court will not find in his favour after tomorrow’s case or perhaps out of that deep-seated predisposition to change his mind more often than the weather, Ahern is widely reported as considering only giving sparse detail to the Dail tomorrow. I am not sure we would have known the difference to be quite frank, however it seems that discussions with Senior Ministers has confirmed (if such a thing is even possible at this point) in his mind that he should only give the bare minimum to the Dail and wait for his next Tribunal hearing.

There is a side of me that thinks some of Ministers would have to advise him of that course. Should he go and tell the Dail everything, after first stating he would not be doing so and getting his Ministers to defend such a course of action, he makes them look like prize clowns whose sole purpose is to do Bertie’s bidding and defend all sorts. By heading into the Dail and giving some degree of clarification, all those who wish to “see the tribunal’s proceedings respected” simply end up with a bit of egg on their faces.

This is hardly just a political judgement on their part, they are perhaps keen to see Ahern exert some degree of authority at this point. He appears absolutley incapable of controlling the agenda on this story and his tried and tested mechanism of “brass-necking it” hasn’t done him many favours so far. Perhaps most worrying of all is that the Dail may become a site of ongoing inquiry into what might be seen as questionable political practice. The process of a Tribunal has always been used to remove much of the political heat and sting from a bad news story. It places the problem at a distance from politics, carried out by judges with no legal standing other than finding facts. It is not a trial or a court proceedings, it doesn’t determine innocent or guilt. Most importantly, it takes a long time.

Moving the site of such an inquiry to a dedicated, well-financed Dail committee which would inquire and find in a brief time once a complaint was made to it would put the fear of God into many politicians. Allowing for the ongoign precedent of Dail challenges on the basis of his Tribunal evidence to continue may not be the desire of any who might be king. However it seems to me that there really is no choice on this one.

As I have stated above, Ahern is not in control of this story. He doesn’t know what is going to come at him next and he doesn’t know when. The next appearance on May 20 is nearly two months away, with a trip to Congress in between. That trip may be overshadowed by some tribunal leak or fallout from the High Court case. His position is being undermined by a drip-drip effect and a failure to respond with convincing stories to what emerges. Not giving a statement Wednesday is not only a smack in the face to the Dail, it is also giving a political hostage to fortune for six weeks. Those are gambles that Ahern has not been winning of late.

So he was for turning after all. I didn’t take long for Ahern to turn ‘I will not be making a statement’ into ‘I will in fact, ah, be making a statement’. The Indo reports this morning that he will make use of Dail time on Wednesday to make a speech which will attempt to dispel the “public disquiet” which has been ever present since the testimony of Grainne Carruth at the Tribunal.

The statement will need to square a number of issues, such as why he was dealing in sterling when he has repeatedly stressed that he didn’t, what was the purpose of the B/T account, did he have a controlling interest in it and if so did he have any other accounts during the period when he has testified as having none? There are many many other aspects too that need to be addressed but this is another damaging attempt by Ahern at handling this issue.

He has repeatedly set himself against a particular course of action, with the subsequent full public support of Ministers and loyalists before making a u-turn under pressure from emerging facts and making his supporters look complicit in whatever is going on. The same appears to have happened here as there has been a stream of Ministers from Brendan Smith through Willy O’Dea to Brian Lenihan and up to Dermot Ahern (as well as Martin Mansergh) who have repeatedly stressed the place to answer all this is the tribunal; “let it do its work”, “he will testify in May” etc. Now with this u-turn, Ahern once again makes these Ministers look like a pack of drooling loyalist spivs with little or no critical faculty and a slavish willingness to do the masters bidding.

This cannot last and most likely will not last. There is ever-decreasing scope for Ahern to give patchy and conflicting stories which do little but firefight the immediate crisis that the tribunal has throw up. Since the Dobson interview he has had to change aspects of his story, admit to differing and conflicting versions of events and introduce conceptual gymnastics to cover it over (”a political donation for personal use”). That he set himself against this precise course of action only days ago and then promptly does a u-turn is classic Bertie and it would be tolerated were he to lead a party to another electoral success. But he won’t and thus it won’t be tolerated much longer as he tugs ministers down with him.

The most relieved of the lot will probably be the Greens. Paul Gogarty appeared to let the cat out of the bag on the News at One yesterday when he suggested the only reason Gormley acted is because Harney acted and she only did so out of concern for the PD party and support for Fiona O Malley’s positioning. Thus there will have been worried heads at the prospect of Bertie following through on Noel Ahern’s rhetoric and completely disregarding their opinion on this matter, the relief at appearing to get their way will surely lead to a ‘broad welcoming’ of Bertie’s statement on Wednesday and a ‘that is that’ sentiment afterwards. I would encourage them not to be so quick to support next time, engage the critical faculties and perhaps take a leadership role on this issue.

The real worry here is that he succeeds in his case on Tuesday, gets to protect whatever is said in the Dail from the oversight of the Tribunal and proceeds to continue to tell two stories to the nation. IF there is even a perception of this happening and a coterie of Ministers lined up to look like happy clowns justifying this process, then this will only continue. Because after Tuesday’s case and Wednesday’s speech every Fianna Fail TD will be thinking the same thing - “Where is his next crisis going to come from? And when?”

Noel Ahern doesn’t give much weight to John Gormley’s worries aired yesterday and captured here by Green Ink. He reckons that Gormley was only following Harney and anyway he is Minister with responsibility for tribunals so should be keeping counsel. Well it is only “small money” we are talking about here so perhaps the partners in government should pipe down and get back to their jobs.

Ahern has set himself against making a statement, which means that this should overshadow his upcoming trip to Congress, the next few weeks in the Dail and any attempt to coherently campaign on Lisbon Treaty. As usual this may die down, it may not force him to resign but there is every reason to think that the drip-drip of information and the slow unravelling of a story will continue.

He will continue to brass-neck this particular issue and hope it goes away but it is another cut, another slow wound and they are adding up. Varadker termed Ahern’s refusal to make a statement an arrogant “slap-down” (how very WWF) and to be honest it reminded me ever so slightly of this:

Irish Election: The dog barks?
Greens join calls for Ahern statement

The following is a synopsis of an article that appears on Irish Left Review.

When Eamon Gilmore, TD launched his leadership bid back in August he laid out his primary objective:

‘Labour should break free of, and reject, the “half party” limit which others impose on us - and which, sometimes, we inflict on ourselves.’

Full parties are those that can realistically lead a coalition government. In Ireland, consistent with political patterns in other European countries, there are two and only two full parties at any given time. Therefore, for Labour to become a full party, it must supplant one of the two larger parties.

The first electoral challenge in Labour’s quest to end its half-party status is the upcoming locals. The problem, however, is that Fine Gael is also sizing up the locals for a major breakthrough. They have a very real opportunity of becoming the largest party at local level – they trail FF by only a handful of local seats. If they are successful, this will further reinforce the ‘two full party’ system of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, leaving Labour continuing to flounder in its half party status.

However, Labour and the progressive parties can still turn the tables on the larger parties – by coming to a loose arrangement or a ‘progressive understanding’ upon which they can together fight the locals. For in 2004, the three progressive parties – Labour, Sinn Fein and the Greens – combined took 23%, trailing Fine Gael by 4% and Fianna Fail by 8%. Not only that, this progressive bloc was the largest ‘grouping’ on the major urban councils, in both seats and votes.

The progressive parties can’t overtake the larger parties in terms of seats. Where they are weakest – Connaght, Ulster, etc. – is over-represented with more than five times the councillors per electors than in areas where they are strongest. However, if they fought the election on a 1st preference basis, they could pick up seats but more importantly, they could obtain more votes than Fine Gael and quite possible Fianna Fail. In 2004, while Fine Gael and Fianna Fail were declining in the popular vote, the progressives gained over 6\%.

Of course, there are problems bringing the three parties together in a ‘Common Cause’ – not least of which is that the Greens are in government. However, there are obvious benefits for all three parties. Most of all, they would belong to a grouping that could not only drive Fine Gael into third place, but quite possible challenge Fianna Fail for first. For Labour, Sinn Fein and the Greens – and for progressives throughout Ireland – this could be for the formula whereby they end their historical half and quarter status and begin to challenge the larger parties in a way that has not been done before.

For a full analysis of these and related issues, please click on to Irish Left Review.

Irish Left Review is an online journal established by progressive bloggers to promote political cooperation between progressives from all traditions on this island with a view to helping the Left grow challenge the stranglehold that the parties of the Right have over Irish politics.

The Irish Independent revealed today that the Taoiseach will tell the Mahon tribunal that he converted his salary cheques into sterling, and then back into punts, before lodging them into the three accounts he kept at the Permanent TSB branch in Drumcondra. This is in response to Grainne Carruth’s devastating evidence to the Mahon Tribunal on 20 March that she deposited £15,500 of sterling into the Taoiseach’s account.

An outline of Mr Ahern’s planned new strategy was provided yesterday by a highly-placed source. But he declined to specify why the Taoiseach would convert Irish cheques into sterling, then reconvert them to Irish pounds and lodge them, after paying foreign exchange charges and commissions on each transaction.

“There are perfectly legitimate reasons why things happened the way they did,” the source insisted.

The move is reminiscent of mafia crime boss Vincent ‘the chin’ Gigante, also known as ‘The Oddfather’ of New York. For years Gigante feigned mental incompetence in an attempt to avoid prosecution. “He became a familiar sight [in New York], wandering around the streets of Greenwich Village, a shabby, demented old man. Dressed in striped pyjamas, slippers and a royal blue robe, grinning and talking to himself and looking like an injured old bird. “God is my lawyer,” he told a psychiatrist. “He will defend me.”*

The Taoiseach has played the eccentric defense card before, with some success. In December 2007 he was asked at the Mahon Tribunal why he did not have a bank account between 1987 and 1993. He replied that he “wanted to do it that way.”

There is nothing in the law or the Constitution that you should . . . Some people put yellow in their hair, some people wear rings in their nose . . . I decided to cash my cheques, full stop.”

The latest move is part of that same defense plan - to treat the Taoiseach as an eccentric, given to bouts of mentally incompetent behaviour. The Taoiseach knows that the Mahon tribunal did not accept it, but he’s not worried about that. He knows that once the public accept it, he’ll survive.

The Taoiseach also knows that his coalition partners, the Greens and the PDs, will accept his ‘Oddfather’ defense without dissent.

It’s a high risk strategy, because it’s one thing to be the mentally incompetent ‘Oddfather’ who lives down the street, another to be the mentally incompetent ‘Oddfather’ who’s in charge of a country in an economic downturn.

The Taoiseach is due to return to the Tribunal in May.

It strikes one as serendipity - for the opposition at least - that the Dail debates a motion on the three reports from last week into Port Laoise, the one that gave rise to the Naughton letter and entered ’systems-failure’ in the political lexicon by failing patients in a grotesque multiplicity of manners while the HSE meets with relevant unions to discuss €300 million worth of cuts and possible A&E closures.

On another note, it will be interesting to see how HSE martyr Ned O Keeffe votes tonight after his readmission to the Fianna Fail Parliamentary Party - if he can avoid an enforced absence.

This post actually started a while back, the last time Bertie mentioned we would be tightening our belts this year, I decided to finish it because he mentioned it again yesterday.

We know that the US is as good as in a recession, their central bank doesnt seem to have much capacity to stall the bad numbers via interest rate cuts and the ECB has no inclination to lower rates here due to 3%+ inflation. We are where we are and there is little we can do to affect macroeconomic change. Yet the exchequer figures are almost E516 million behind target, construction is slowing to a halt, job creation is dwindling and we are facing a ‘tough year’ ahead.

There are two ways to work through this, meander along talking about cost control when a ten year record shows an inability to control costs in the ad-hoc fashion we seem addicted to or construct some coherent policy framework to address our issue. The latter is obviously the most attractive option, as it gives us some measure of control over our own destiny. Indeed so-called doom merchants like David McWilliams are even turning their thoughts - again ahead of the game - to what we can do to turn this into an opportunity.

It was with interest that I listened yesterday to a discussion on The Last Word, where David went through outlining his article with Sean Murphy from Chambers Ireland. What struck me was that the business community still seem to be stuck in ‘plan a’. The positive spin on the construction numbers was that ultimately they would lower inflation, wages and costs making us - once again - attractive to FDI from abroad and all would be well.

The point that was being made by McWilliams - one which it is hard not to give credit to Michael Taft for originally making - is that we need to see that this only gets us so far. Business is not an evil entity per se. It can deliver to people security, jobs and foster social inclusion while also making a valuable contribution to wider society.

This effect is not some predetermined outcome however and if we are to enter into a virtuous cycle of sustainable business government needs to begin looking at ways in which its current approach - focussed solely on big-business abroad - needs to become more local, more nuanced and more open. You all may not have read the feedback from Paddy’s Valley but the biggest bum not that struck me was the intransigence of Enterprise Ireland to a group of self-starters heading off to pitch, chat and hopefully connect with Silicon Valley.

Yes, we all remember the dot-com bubble and no, we should not have an economy as reliant on tech as it was on construction for growth but we should have one that sees a ‘knowledge economy’ as serving domestic needs. Michael Hennigan has written extensively (and will feature in next Thursday’s Inside Out) about the fact that current government policy has put all its eggs in the science research basket with little sense of direction. Paying €8 billion for R&D skills makes sense, if you know what those skills are to serve. Should we be including innovation in domestic industry under that rubric? Or are we hoping solely to produce white-coats for the multinationals.

I don’t think it is sustainable to focus solely on the FDI market as the place researchers need to go, we could do with sustained upgrading of skills and entrepreneurship in Ireland but most positively we could do with government backing for domestic startups.

Michael has put it better himself speaking about saving the Tiger;

“direct intervention by the state (however limited) to promote enterprise development – whether foreign or indigenous – in key economic sectors. It will require a programme to get us back to that policy framework which was jettisoned by the irresponsible actions of Fianna Fail and, in particular, Finance Minister Charlie McCreevey.”

For as long as we spend 48 times more on property abroad than we do supporting local enterprise, the national attitude will almost constantly lead us back down the dark path from which we drag ourselves. For as long as we are looking at managing costs during the downturn we are barking up the wrong tree. We need to be investing, continually, in society and economy as a whole to ensure that the situation will not get worse, nor repeat.

Politically speaking, for we must don’t you know, Pat Leahy made the point that this downturn and the response to it - I refrain here from ‘managed’ because the point of this article is that managed now needs to be augmented with creativity at a domestic level and supported by government as a matter of need - could rid Fianna Fail of their last trump card. Personally I think their trump card currently leads the opposition but I take his point. The government ran unopposed on the economy for three elections. The last time out the opposition were simply too timid to express views on their performance. If this next two years, or possibly longer, goes badly then you will see Fianna Fail are far more beatable but as a more economically literate society the opposition will need a coherent plan, a clear vision and implementable policies. This is unlikely to prove a step to far if they commit to it but they do need to get to the detail fairly soon.