Ireland Calling
by John SpainRecent Posts
- Polish immigrant becomes most famous Pole in Ireland after botched article
- One flew over the Davos nest - Enda Kenny and the lunatics at the asylum
- Decision day for Irish economy - Ireland to pay back €1.25 billion Anglo Irish Bank bondholders
- Bailout boys from Europe are back in Ireland
- The tears of Irish emigrants and predictions for Ireland's economy in 2012
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Polish immigrant becomes most famous Pole in Ireland after botched article
Ireland's position in Europe: between a rock and a hard place
The deal done last week between the countries of Europe to save the euro means that Ireland, by accident, finds itself in a difficult position. We're between a rock and a hard place.
Or between the devil and the deep blue sea, the devil being the U.K. and the deep blue sea being Europe.
It's a critical juncture for us, one fraught with danger. Uniquely among all the EU countries, the deal raises a fundamental question for Ireland because of our close ties with the U.K., the only one of the 27-nation European Union countries to veto the new agreement.
Darren Scully's comments: are we racists, or realists?
Probably the most talked about story here over the past week has been the allegedly racist comments made by a local politician called Darren Scully, the mayor of Naas, a large commuter town about 20 miles from Dublin in Co. Kildare.
Scully said in an interview last week on a local radio station that he had a problem with black African immigrants who are now living in the Naas area and who were coming to see him about issues like housing and welfare benefits.
The Irish Presidency and the vision thing
But there is huge spending that is questionable, and the state is seen both as a soft touch and a bottomless pit. One much publicized welfare case here recently showed that an out of work Dublin family with four children (one with special needs) is getting just over
Is the Irish presidential election just a distraction?
No name was given, and I'm not handing out prizes for guessing right. It just shows the level we've got down to here.
Estimates of how big the overall problem is vary from
Ireland's unemployment at 14.3 percent - where are the entrepreneurs?
The most recent figure for those out of work in Ireland is for July this year, and it shows around 470,000 without a full time job. When it's seasonally adjusted this comes back to 447,000 which equates to 14.3% of the workforce.
So if you think President Obama has a problem with the "jobs crisis" in the U.S. (where unemployment in July was 9.1%), spare a thought for Ireland.
Last week in this column we were exploring some of the politically incorrect issues that have been raised about the numbers out of work here. The most contentious of these has been the suggestion that the Irish are work shy.
Are the Irish work shy?
Here we are back again after our summer break, a few weeks in which the world economy has teetered on the brink and poor little Ireland's vulnerability has been cruelly exposed.
To make us feel even more depressed it's been raining -- we've had the wettest summer in years; in Kerry it was the wettest summer since records began in 1886!
Plus it's been colder than normal over the past month. Where's all that global warming when you need it?
The gold-plated pensions brigade
In his last year in the job, Goggin got a staggering pay package of over
James Bond’s latest villian is an Irishman - Dunne, Niall Dunne
The return is James Bond has been marked by the latest novel by Jeffrey Deaver, the best selling American author. John Spain reviews the newest adventure of the reborn spy.
He has bravely taken on and suavely defeated the likes of Oddjob, May Day, Jaws and Rosa Klebb in the past.
But James Bond faces an entirely more humdrum henchman in his latest adventure -- an Irishman called Niall Dunne.
What's Another €24 Billion?
After all the promises in the election about a new approach to the economic crisis to protect Irish taxpayers, all the talk about standing up to Europe and making bondholders share the burden, all the guff about telling the European Central Bank (ECB) that we would do things our way, not Frankfurt's way, last week we found out that nothing is going to change.
There is no real difference in policy between the new government and the last government. The policy is still to pay up in full and let the Irish taxpayer take the pain.
Irish are still stressed out
Back in the mid-1990s he was the minister for communications when Ireland's second national cell phone license was awarded to a company led by the businessman Denis O'Brien.
O'Brien subsequently sold the business and made over €200 million, which became the basis for the billion dollar fortune he has made from phone businesses in the meantime. But there were allegations right from the beginning that Lowry had influenced the selection process which gave the license to O'Brien's company rather than other applicants.
Smiles as bail out crunch approaches Ireland
Kenny is good in that kind of situation ...he's personable, relaxed, good company, he can tell a joke and deliver a speech. So back here we're not surprised that he carried it off so well and so effortlessly.
That kind of intimate, friendly setting is where he shines. His speech was poetic, moving and inspired (take a bow whoever wrote it), cleverly linking the experience of the slaves from Africa and the destitute Irish immigrants after the Famine and their joint role in building America.
Irish Government suffers a shaky start as Europe says no
The customary thing here is for the media to give an incoming administration a honeymoon of a week or two to give them a chance to settle in. But this time it’s different. This time there can be no honeymoon.
Like many newly married couples in Ireland these days, the new coalition partners did not really expect to get one. Given the crisis we face, the country cannot afford the time.
Ireland's new Government established - What's the plan to save the country?
My old teacher and his catchphrase kept coming to mind over the past week as the dust settled after the election and it became clear how desperately eager Fine Gael and the Labor Party are to grasp the reins of power.
They're so eager they could not even put on a show of disagreement and brinkmanship as they held talks to hammer out an agreed program for governing the country over the next five years.
Following General Election Ireland's problems are far from over
Journalists are fond of throwing around the word historic, but really there is no other word to describe what has happened. Ninety years of Civil War politics has come to an end.
Fine Gael, the party which grew out of the side that won the Civil War and established the Irish Free State, only to be dumped a few years later, has regained its rightful place as the dominant force in Irish political life.
For decades Fine Gael has been the weaker twin of the pair of parties that emerged from the ashes of the Civil War. Fianna Fail, with its anti-Treaty "republican" ethos and its core demand for the immediate reunification of Ireland, has been a cancer in the Irish body politic ever since de Valera led it to victory in 1932.
Since then it has been the dominant political party in Ireland, in power for most of the time. It positioned itself as the only party that was "sound" on the national question.
Ireland's General Election - maybe, just maybe, change is coming
Fianna Fail, the party which has dominated politics in Ireland for so long, could be consigned to the garbage can of history. If they come in fourth place behind Fine Gael, Labor and even Sinn Fein in terms of the number of Dail (Parliament) seats they win, it will be a disaster for the party.
It seems incredible -- it's just a few years since Fianna Fail totally dominated the Irish political landscape -- but the level of anger in the country at the extent of the economic disaster means that the party is facing a political blood bath in the vote on Friday.
Fine Gael on the path to victory in Irish General Election
But no one believes them.
Everyone knows there's no money. So all the talk about spending hundreds of millions on this new program and a billion or two on that new program has zero credibility.
Irish political parties make promises they can't afford to keep
After the first week of the election campaign here it's hard not to sink into a profound depression at the posturing of our politicians.
This should have been an election that no political party would try to buy. It should have been an election free of promises about tax cuts or extra spending, neither of which we can afford since the country is broke.
But that has not stopped our politicians. Not a bit of it.
The 85 billion euro question
There's only one question that really matters in the general election campaign now beginning in Ireland. It's the €85 billion question -- the question of what the various political parties here will do about the €85 billion bailout fund put together by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the EU to stop Ireland going bust and accepted by the outgoing government.
Fianna Fail says it's the best deal that was available. Fine Gael and Labor say it's a poor deal and must be renegotiated. Sinn Fein says it's such a bad deal we should tell the IMF and the EU to take their billions back.
The Week That Changed Everything
A week is a long time in politics, as Tip O'Neill once said. I wonder what that wise old head would have thought of the shenanigans in Irish politics over the past week.
More than likely he would have been appalled and saddened in equal measure, which is how all of us here have felt.
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