Yesterday, in the aftermath of the climbdown regarding the Medical Cards fiasco, I read a post on the weblog of Green Party Justice Spokesperson Ciarán Cuffe, which dealt with the Medical Cards issue.

After reading the post, I gave him my view of the Fianna Fáíl / Green coalition, and put some questions to him and ended by making some constructive suggestions that the Government can take to raise the nations finances.

As of yet, he has not responded, so I’ve taken the liberty of stating those views and posting the questions here….

Ciarán, I’ll be frank - I think the Green Party will suffer very badly at the locals, and perhaps at the next General Election, if this sort of attacking of the vulnerable continues.

My advice is simple - get out of the coalition now. You cannot stop FF - they will do as they please, with little regard for anybody else. Anecdotally, most people I know who would vote or transfer to Green candidates will not be doing so now - particularly in light of what their parents, grandparents, in-laws and other family members have just had to go through.

Some questions -

1. Will the free travel pass for OAP’s be ended?

2. What guarantee can you give me to pass on to my elderly relatives that the threshold for medical cards won’t be altered in 6 months?

3. Why is the state investing in what can only be described as sub-prime lending, through the Home Choice loans scheme? It is cheaper to buy on the open market at present - people on the scheme run the risk of negative equity.

4. What impact will funding cutbacks have on local government? Specifically, will Dublin have a mayor to elect in the lifetime of this Government, or will we be forced to watch the Council elect a figurehead?

5. What is the present timeline for Metro North and the Interconnector?

6.a. What is the status of Metro West?

6.b. What is the status of Luas Line F, Luas Line BX and other modes of rail transport?

7. Will there be a threshold in relation to those who have a parking space at their employers place of business?

Here are some suggestions on raising the state finances -

1. A commercial rate charged for the bank guarantee.

2. An end to funding for the likes of Bord na gCon or Horse Racing Ireland.

3. An increased levy on high income earners - for example, why weren’t those earning 300K per annum charged a 3% levy etc?

4. An additionate tax band applicable at say, €250,000.

Suzy brings up an interesting point on the White Paper/Estimates and the budget cut for government agencies. Mergers and abolitions are taking place in 41 agencies and budget cuts/logistic sharing is the order of the day as well.

However some have fared better than others.

The Equality Authority’s budget has been cut by 43% and the Irish Human Rights Commission has been cut by 24% - but the National Disability Authority has only been cut by 2%. There is something very fishy going on there - a case of not rocking the boat and thus you don’t get cut??

A sharing of backservices by the Equality Authority and the Human Rights Commission could not possibly save that much money - there will be policy implications with these cuts, monitoring and protection of the rights of the most at risk in Irish society have been put at risk.

Look at the table of cuts - the NDA’s drop of 2% and mergering of other bodies to it seems to stand out as quite the oddity.

B.2 - Human Rights Commission 24% Cut
E.1 - Equality Authority 43% Cut
E.2 - Equality Tribunal 15% Increase
E.3 - Grants to National Women’s Organisations 5% Cut
E.5 - Cosc - Domestic, Sexual AND Gender-Based Violence 18% Cut
E.6 - Equality Monitoring/Consultative Committee 8% Cut
E.7 - Gender Mainstreaming And Postive Action for Women …. 45% Cut
E.8 - Office of The Minister for Integration 26% Cut

F.1 - Status of People With Disabilities 5 % Cut
F.2 - National Disability Authority 2% Cut
F.3 - Disability Projects 10% Cut

ITs a good week for Red C to take the latest tracking poll for the Sunday Business Post. Markets are falling like stones (Friday has the potential to be another massive dead cat bounce) and the government don’t look to have stamped authority on many aspects of policy.

REcently concludd partnership talks have the ingredients to annoy rather than placate businesses and workers alike while George Hook is busy rising the blue-shirts around him. FF will at least be using these events to cover a sharp drop in their numbers.

FF (-4) 36%

FG (+3) 28%

Lab (-1) 9%

Green (-) 7%

SF (-1) 9%

PD ( +1) 3%

The obvious irony of PD support rising as they exit stage left is overshadowed by the seriousness of a further drop in Labour support in the week their campaign HQ emailed all suporters to highlight an article extolling GIlmore as the real leader of the oposition. In the current economic climate with Cowen and his government failing to secure people’s belief the Labour leader will be very dismayed by the poll. If he is not then the job is not for him. Enda will be pleased for this sort of support next June might keep him his job.

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.

Cowen’s political positioning of the government is very much the slowly slowly affair befitting of a month in May. The cabinet reshuffles were quite deft, keeping the big names happy but at arms length from a putsch while the junior ministries gave the backbenches more hope than Bertie ever dared. It is a mark of confidence as much as anything else to trust Fianna Fail with a meritocratic approach. Beyond this though, we have seen some utterances on policy.

His speech at the grand homecoming was laden with community solidarity, the needs of others, the common good and the necessity of good government. If Bertie never did the “vision” thing or the ideology then Cowen was brimming with the stuff for his first few days. The approach to social partnership, as a microcosm of his tack towards the trade unions, is likely to become easy shorthand for the differences between Ahern and Cowen. Ahern isn’t gone a wet week when we read the news that the HSE will allow about 1,000 jobs to go in natural attrition.

The management structure at the HSE has come in for a huge amount of criticism as disprorpotional to the level of care and the number of doctors. Indeed it is one of the rare points of unison among all critics of the public health system. Jobs that go need to be streamlining delivery, not cost-saving for its own sake. That means somebody (anybody?) knowing what the hell people are supposed to do and who they are reporting to. The voluntary redundancy measure was on the table at the formation of the HSE only for Ahern to intervene and assure unions the jobs were safe.

Harney won’t speculate on the scale of job cuts in the service - and rightly so, the last thing people want is to see the return to the binge-purge approach to Health provision - but putting the service on an even keel in the ratio of service providers to managers is a necessary step to do this. This returns it back to the realm of industrial relations, cutting jobs doesn’t need to bring the house down around our ears and just how much hardball gets played is going to be important.

*it wasn’t really. Nor the entire media for that matter. It has been de rigeur for defenders of an Taoiseach in recent times to present the media as the enemy here. If it were not for them this would not be an issue, Ahern and his Ministers would continue to govern in their efficient inimitable fashion and focussing on an economy hitting the skids.

Its an alluring narrative, those self-selected Tribunes in the media (no pun intended) have taken it upon themselves to do this good man out of office. They will not rest unitl he leaves, irrespective of the facts.
They want a head on a plate and good-guy Bertie is to be done down for little more than some unorthodox banking in a period of enormous personal strife.

What did him in was what does every politician in here. It was the proverbial “thousand cuts“. I have been stressing this for ages but what took place was an extensive examination of a story which was given to account for suspicious monies and transactions to the accounts of a Finance  Minister (accounts he didn’t really have). The stories became stressed in the face of facts and were challenged. Ahern clarifies and the cycle repeats.

Yet it wasn’t the media that did him in, it was Ahern himself. From the moment that the stories appeared about Ahern’s unorthodox banking behaviour, he has appeared on the backfoot. At first it was not a matter for comment, then it was a matter for an intimate one to one. Once that tale became stressed Vincent Browne challenged Bertie during the election and was dispensed with, the election taken and, once again, we all “moved on”. Yet there has been no escaping the inquiry and there has been no explaining it away. Mahon has poked and prodded a story and it has not held up. Grainne Carruth was not an exception in this sense, it was a trend. It was the personification of the way in which this has developed an almost dialectical tendency.

Doing down a good man may have taken place here but it is misplaced to blame the media for that killer blow. It was only today that they all heralded Ahern’s ‘win’ in the High Court yesterday. In the end he was done in by himself. Actions in the past were not explained properly or fully. It was examined in detail by print and web. The result is that over the course of a year and a bit the story could not take the strain of that analysis and Bertie Ahern decided to go.

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.