Irish Politics, Current Affairs and Magazine Archive - Politico.ie

The Debt Justice Action (DJA) campaign, of which I am a part, has just lodged an application with the Guinness Book of Records to recognise Ireland as having the world’s most expensive ever bank bailout.  A video accompanying the application can be viewed below.  The satirical intent behind the project is well captured by DJA member Diarmuid O’Flynn: “We’ve had a difficult few years here in Ireland.  Between the collapse of the banking system; Jedward at the Eurovision; and 1-6 at home to Germany, our reputation on the world stage is in tatters. That may be about to change”.

Below, the full text of Stephen Donnelly's Dáil statement on Budget 2013, delivered yesterday (5 December). 

The entire approach to this budget is flawed. The Government is taking €3.5 billion from the Irish people and handing it to Anglo Irish Bank as payment on a debt we never owed. The Government is taking €3.5 billion from the Irish people but the deficit will fall by less than €1 billion. Why is that? It is because of the payment of almost €2 billion of interest to Anglo Irish Bank on a debt we never owed. The Government will allow AIB to retain a €1.1 billion top-up to its pension fund. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, stated that tax compliance is a core principle of our democracy. He lectures the people on their obligation to pay a property tax, the entire benefit of which he will hand to Anglo Irish Bank.

If the administration of justice in public is essential to the maintenance of a democratic state, then clearly the stability of the state would be supported by making access to what is happening in courts easier by having cases broadcast on television. By Vincent Browne.

The expectation that the silly season will end abruptly with the trial of Seán FitzPatrick and his co-accused is mistaken.

The book of evidence will be supplied to the defendants in the first week of October, and it could well be another year before a trial commences. That is unless things are fast-tracked; but, even then, the earliest likely date is next April.

The trial could be over in a few days - if, for instance, the judge finds after the prosecution presents its case that there is no case to answer - or it could go on for several weeks, the latter being the more likely. But whichever, it will be the most fascinating trial here, certainly since the Arms Trial of 1970. It could also be as sensational.

Above: Hoarding around the unfinished Anglo HQ in the Dublin docklands

The Anglo: Not Our Debt Campaign has described the deal on the deferral of the €3.1 billion promissory note payment due tomorrow as a “political stroke” that does not address the real issue and that squanders an opportunity to write down an illegitimate debt.

Speaking at a press conference today, campaign spokeswoman Nessa Ní Chasaide said that the Government “was borrowing from an ill-defined Peter to pay a Paul that has no right to be paid in the first place – one form of illegitimate debt is being replaced by another.  Rather than refuse the socialisation of massive private bank losses, this move will see the State, and ultimately the people in Ireland, assume full sovereign responsibility for €30,000,000,000 of debts run up by private speculators.” After the press conference, the campaigners handed in a petition with almost 7,000 signatures at the Department of Finance calling on the debt to be written down rather than deferred.

Below, Vincent Browne responds to tweets regarding tonight's show. Panel: Mary Minihan, Karl Whelan, Damien English and Kevin Rafter.

On this evening's Tonight with Vincent Browne, Mary Minihan, Karl Whelan, Kevin Rafter and Damien English will discuss Fine Gael's first year in office and Michael Noonan's announcement to the Dáil on promissory note payment today. Below, Vincent Browne blogs ahead of the show.

Fine Gael and Labour promised in the last election campaign – just over a year ago – that they would seek a write-down of the bank debt that had been inflicted on the Irish people.

They didn’t quite put it that way but that is what was understood and that is what they wanted people to understand.

The plan to postpone the payment of the Anglo Irish promissory note until 2025 is part of a wider attempt to save the asses of the banks by maintaining the fiction they are not insolvent. By Donagh Brennan.

Ann Pettifor has argued regularly that the problems in the British economy stem from the vast level of private sector debt, principally in financial institutions rather than with public sector debt.

On this evening's Tonight with Vincent Browne, Stephen Donnelly, Siobhán Creaton, Peter Mathews and Averil Power will discuss the promissory note deal and today's meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform. Below, Vincent shares his thoughts ahead of the programme.

Point two of Fine Gael’s five-point election plan stated the following:

 “Fine Gael believes that the IMF/EU bailout deal has not and will not restore investor confidence in our country, and must therefore be renegotiated to reduce the interest rate and to ensure a fairer sharing of the cost of fixing Ireland’s broken banks. The current deal is bad for Ireland – and bad for Europe."

 Here was a clear commitment on burden sharing in fixing our banks.

The Anglo: Not Our Debt campaign group has described the proposed deal on deferral of the €3.1 billion ‘promissory note’ payment due on 31 March as likely to create bigger debt problems for people in Ireland in the long run. The group describes the deal as “a political blunder by a government that has wasted a chance for an immediate write down of Anglo debt.”

Campaign spokeswoman Nessa Ní Chasaide said, “While it is positive that €3.1 billion is not being immediately sucked out of the country on 31 March, the Government is just borrowing the money to do this. The payment is being replaced with another loan to be repaid in the future – one form of illegitimate debt is being replaced by another.” 

Community activist Cathleen O’Neill claimed that the fundamental issue was not being addressed: “We, ordinary people living in Ireland, did nothing to run up this debt in the first place – it is not our debt, and we should not be paying it, now or in 2025.”

The breaking news that there is an imminent deal on the payment of €3.1 billion due on 31 March on Anglo promissory notes, deferring payment until 2025, seems welcome but we need to see terms and conditions. First the interest rate that will apply, second, what does this mean for the remaining €29 billion promissory notes? Then, will this remain on the books in the calculation of the national debt, requiring us to reduce the dept to 60 per cent of GDP by 2015, which will retain an enormous strain on the public finances.

A campaign group calling for the write down of Irish debt has labelled the link being drawn between the debt and the Fiscal Treaty as “obscene and tantamount to blackmail”. Community worker and Anglo: Not Our Debt spokesperson John Bissett said he “utterly rejected any spurious quid pro quo between voting Yes in the forthcoming referendum on the Fiscal Treaty and the suspension or cancellation of the Anglo and Irish Nationwide debt.”

He went on to say that “there has been far too much of this sort of horse-trading in Ireland in recent years and what we need now is for the debt to be dealt with ethically and on its own terms.”

Another campaign spokesperson, UCD lecturer Marie Moran, said that the debts arising from Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society were illegitimate.

“This is not our debt in the first place, and the idea that we should be offered some minor concession on it to vote Yes to the Treaty is obscene - it has all the hallmarks of a ‘stroke’ where one has to pay to receive some of one’s own possessions back after the ignominy of a daylight robbery.”

The financial crisis means the need to scrutinise public bodies is more important than ever. Recent discoveries have found that both NAMA and Anglo Irish are subject to some requests for information. Journalist Gavin Sheridan talks to Richard Chambers about the state of government transparency in Ireland.

A plan to transform the half-built Anglo headquarters in Dublin into a 'vertical park' for public use would stand as a permanent reminder of the problematic nature of a system so orientated towards property development if it goes ahead. By Philip Lawton.

If the last decade was dominated by ‘creativity’, then ‘innovation’ has surely now been well and truly adopted as the current buzzword of choice. This can be witnessed throughout various institutions and endeavours, from the recently re-titled Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, to Innovation Dublin (an outcome of the ‘Creative Dublin Alliance’), and the  TCD/UCD Innovation Alliance. It is hard to trace exactly where the focus on innovation came from. Perhaps notions of ‘culture’ and ‘creativity’ are too difficult to clearly define, too loose around the edges, so to speak. Innovation is clear. It has a direction and a specific output. It represents a desire to connect diverse elements such as scientific output, technological change, the creative arts, and, at times, the social sciences towards largely economic goals. The new Provost of Trinity College, Professor Patrick Prendergast, recently emphasised this perspective as follows; “When James Joyce wrote Ulysses he was being disruptive in changing the way we think about the novel. Joyce was a true innovator. A century later he might have created Google.” This might have been a throwaway comment, yet it highlights the current desire for that which might once have sat on the outside to be brought centre-stage.

Michael Noonan has defended Nama salaries to developers and the payment of salaries and bonuses in state-controlled banks. The banks argue that these bonuses are necessary to ensure optimum performance. Is this the case? By Richard Chambers.

Rather than shovelling more money into Anglo-Irish/Irish Nationwide we could use it to boost growth, employment and living standards. By Michael Taft.

Over the next 20 years Anglo-Irish (including Irish Nationwide) will cost the Irish taxpayers €90 billion.

Just reflect on that for a moment.

Now repeat:  over the next 20 years Anglo-Irish will cost us €90 billion.

It’s difficult to get one’s head around that amount but it is based on figures released last week by Michael Noonan in response to a parliamentary question from Pearse Doherty, TD.  Recently, Michael Burke, Tom McDonnell and I co-wrote a post on Progressive-Economy on the subject arguing that the Government should immediately enter into renegotiation with the Irish Central Bank and the ECB with a view to writing down that debt.

We have the opportunity to strike a new deal on the Anglo/INBS debt. Below, Michael Taft, Michael Burke and Tom McDonnell outline a series of approaches which would provide the Government with an opportunity to expunge it.

The Anglo-Irish and Irish Nationwide debt must become a major political issue. The Anglo/INBS debt-burden is an unjust and unwarranted charge which the Irish people ought have no responsibility for, a charge which will continue to drain the productive economy for years to come. In the following we discuss how we can expunge this debt based on (a) renegotiating the promissory note, (b) renegotiating a new repayment schedule (if any are needed), (c) writing down bondholder debt, and (d) political strategies to strengthen the Government’s negotiating position. The starting point should be a Government announcement this autumn that it does not intend to continue with the current promissory note payment schedule and will enter into renegotiation with the affected parties.

We should not resign ourselves to the idea that those responsible for our national economic meltdown will not be held to account for their actions, writes Paul McElhinney.

There was a time when Irish people would have simply shrugged in resignation at the lack of progress in holding members of society’s elite to account for their transgressions.  “Ah sure, that’s the system: the little people always pick up the tab - the rich and well-heeled always get away with blue murder,” would have been the resigned refrain. If the Celtic Tiger period left anything positive in its wake, it is an attitude of greater self-confidence among people, now able to see the feet of clay of those in authority and less afraid of speaking truth to power. While this is undeniably true, what difference has it made?

UCD economics professor Morgan Kelly has said that Ireland has become insolvent, and cannot hope to repay the money it has been loaned as part of the EU/IMF bailout. By Bernard O'Rourke.

Presenting the Hubert Butler Lecture as part of the Kilkenny Arts Festival (listen at the link below), Kelly warned that government and Central Bank estimates of the repayments needed are too optimistic. The current government estimate is that by 2015 Ireland will owe about €200 billion. Kelly challenged this figure, saying that the total losses of the banks will be “around €90-100 billion,” as opposed to the estimate of €60 billion made by the Central Bank, which means that Ireland “will have a debt of around €240-250billion by 2015”.

“There is no way that we can repay that,” he said.

He continued: "Ireland has “basically ceased to exist as a sovereign entity. We are basically an EU protectorate.”

His handling of the banking crisis reflected the variety of politics he practised – not the type of person he was, writes Vincent Browne.

The problem with Brian Lenihan was his politics. No, not that he was a member of Fianna Fáil, but his politics. He was a fine fellow, generous, sociable, funny, clever, articulate, well-read, musical, courageous, committed to this society and us its people. But the politics...

Yes, of course, he did what he believed was in the best interests of the country, it was how he perceived the best interests of the country to be that, in my opinion, was the problem.

I suspect he had his politics thought through quite well, as he had much else. For instance, he was adamant that citizenship in our present circumstances required everyone to share in the pain of the adjustments that had to be made.

Cormac O’Malley interviews Éamon Ó Cuív.

Deputy Ó Cuív, Fianna Fáil is currently made up of 20 TDs in Dáil Éireann. Did you expect your party to lose as many seats as you did? And do you think it was about time that your party be out of power?

Well to answer the second part of the question, it’s probably a pity that we won the 2007 election. If a party is in government for too long, then people will always think that an alternative of some sort is better. So I do think that it’s about time Fianna Fáil be out of power yes. Whether I thought Fianna Fáil would do as badly as they did; I expected that we would lose a lot of seats. So I did think it was going to be bad. Although there were a lot of seats we lost by a little bit. Unfortunately, that’s the way it worked out. In a lot of constituencies we were the last person standing. Such is the way of politics.

It's time to leave behind mistakes of the past and set ourselves on a different path, says independent TD Stephen Donnelly

Right now we have a choice. We can continue with the sins of our past, or we can wake up, recognise what’s happening, and choose a different path. As a sovereign, democratic nation, that choice belongs to all of us, and to Michael Noonan as our representative.

Time is running out. Every month we continue down the disastrous path of Fianna Fáil policy our options narrow. If we are going to wake up and choose a different future, we must recognise some critical misconceptions. Once we do this, new options emerge.

Armed with these new options, we and the new Government can begin to fight back. We can stop the madness that has the Irish people paying off the debts of private investors. We can use our taxes instead to help struggling families in Ireland. We can create a banking system that is vibrant and responsible. We can get money out to businesses to create jobs.

Anglo's attempts to keep its share price afloat in the wake of Seán Quinn's disastrous speculation were at best highly dubious, writes Vincent Browne

Seán Quinn said on Monday: "Our mistake was to place an overreliance on the Irish banking system and the many predictions for continued sustained growth in the Irish economy from some of the country's leading financial services experts."

He seems to be in denial.

It was persistent questioning by Sinn Fein's Caoimhgin O Caolain in the Dail last week that wheedled out of Brian Cowen the revelations that not only did he play golf in Druids Glen with Sean Fitzpatrick in July 2008, but that he spent the evening in the company of Fitzpatrick, another senior Anglo banker and Alan Gray, a board member of the Central Bank. It was a "long-standing" engagement, Cowen said, and he took the opportunity to discuss the economy with the trio.

The hesitant nature by which the information arrived was as shady as the revelation itself. Allegations (unsubstantiated) made in the media by former Anglo boss David Drumm that Brian Cowen instructed the National Treasury Management Agency to deposit public funds with the ailing Anglo, drew calamitous attention on Cowen and Fianna Fail.

So Brian Cowen did attend a golf outing in July 2008 organised by his friend Fintan Drury, which Seán FitzPatrick also attended, and "no discussions regarding Anglo Irish Bank took place".

Protests outside Anglo Irish Bank and Dail Eireann passed off peacefully tonight. By Shane Creevy.

Outside Anglo Irish Bank on Stephens Green they marched to the calls of ‘NAMA NAMA no way, time to make the wealthy pay!’

And outside Dail Eireann the crowd shouted in unison, ‘When they say cutback, we say fight back!’

(Audio: Politico interviews James O’Toole, one of the organisers of the protest.)