Finfacts Ireland Blog

Ireland and Climate Change - Where is the Plan?

2007-12-12T18:22:00.000Z

The logo has the slogan - - Ireland's plan of action on climate change - - There was no plan last month at the high-profile launch of a publicity campaign. Only if governing was about spending an advertising budget!!

The following is an extract from a press release issued in relation to Minister for the Environment John Gormley's participation at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia.

During his intervention the Minister spoke of the Green Party’s influence in Government. "The new government has set an ambitious target of a 3 percent annual reduction in green house gas emissions. We have set up a new cabinet committee on climate change chaired by our prime minister, introduced an annual carbon budget and announced a series of measures, including the elimination of energy inefficient light bulbs. We do not see these measures as a burden but rather as an exciting new opportunity," he said. "We know that the window of opportunity to prevent dangerous climate change is rapidly closing. But it is still within our reach if we agree an historic "Bali Roadmap" leading to a global and comprehensive climate agreement in 2009," he added.

The Minister added, "We, as political leaders, must send the clearest signal yet that we are entering a new era, an era which sees a real paradigm shift. We must begin to think in an entirely new way. We must think carbon. And if carbon is to become the new global currency then we must put a price on carbon.

Here in Bali we must launch a process that leads to a comprehensive deal that addresses mitigation and adaptation, as well as technology and finance, as part of the building blocks of a new climate framework." In conclusion "The window of opportunity to successfully address climate change is fast closing. We have 10 years to stabilise our emissions but only 48 hours to reach agreement here in Bali. We have no choice - we cannot fail to demonstrate political leadership here. We simply cannot leave Bali without a new roadmap."

Whether the "intervention" actually took place, one can only guess, but it's striking that after six months of warning of the peril, and what other countries should do about climate change, there have been no specifics of what unpalatable choices that will be necessary to achieve big cuts in emissions.

For example, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lauds France for its nuclear power but even on wind energy, Irish operators are awaiting decisions from the Government.

A climate change Cabinet sub-committee that met once since June??

Light bulbs?

In the past 2 weeks, we have had the launch of a publicity campaign and a "Carbon Budget" that was aspirational without any costs.

The US has been criticised for insisting that specific emissions targets be excluded from the final Bali Roadmap, which sets out the goal of achieving a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol by 2009.

The European Union pushed for the inclusion of a target of 25-40% carbon emission cuts from the 1990 level, by 2020.

What are the implications of this for Ireland? Like so much else, our policymakers may well not know.

It's easy at this stage for politicians to waffle about 2020 when most of them will be in clover at that future time, with their gold plated pensions.

Our lack of what could remotely be termed a "plan", simply does not match the posturing and demands for action from other countries.

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Finfacts Climate Change Reports

Low Irish interest in Science makes Goal of Ireland as a World Class Knowledge Economy an Expensive Pipedream

2007-12-04T15:51:00.000Z

From the Eurobarometer survey - answer to a survey question on interest in scientific research coverage in the news

This week, the European Commission published a new Eurobarometer survey on scientific research in the media, which showed that in Ireland in answer to a survey question on interest in scientific research coverage in the news, 41% of the Irish sample expressed interest compared with an EU average of 57%, 80% in Sweden and 79% in Denmark.

On Monday, the European Commission reported that the proportion of households with a broadband connection in the first quarter of 2007 was highest in the Netherlands (74%), Denmark (70%) and Sweden (67%) and the percentage of households in Ireland with broadband was 31%

Today, the OECD issued its final PISA 2006 educational tests survey. Based on tests carried out among 400,000 students in 57 countries in 2006, the survey focuses particularly on students’ abilities in comprehending and tackling scientific problems.

The top performer in science in PISA 2006 was Finland, followed by Hong Kong-China, Canada, Taiwan, Estonia, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and the Netherlands.

Ireland got a 15th rank and the OECD said that students from families with a more advantaged socio-economic background were more likely to show a general interest in science, and this relationship was strongest in Ireland, France, Belgium and Switzerland.

The Irish Government has a goal for Ireland to become a world-class knowledge economy in just over 5 years. It's a political goal of politicians who have a track record of no appetite for structural reforms and during a period of unprecedented prosperity, have not put a credible foundation in place for an economy post the current National Development Plan infrastructural programme.

It is not only an issue of lack of vision and conviction of political leaders but the broadband debacle also reflects the inherent conservatism of Irish society. The adoption of the web has been at glacial speed compared with the Nordic countries and Korea.

Every day, I encounter examples from some of the biggest companies where a report is published. The public relations firm scrambles to have an interview arranged on a morning radio programme. The report is referred to but it is rare to have it promptly available online. Simply, the people who are motivated enough to check it out, usually would not find it on the related company or organisation website.

On Monday, for example, the Irish unit of the international commercial property services firm Jones Lang LaSalle, launched a review of the year. A press release was issued and more than 24 hours later, the review is not available online. From banks to big accounting firms, that is the rule rather than the exception.

So, it's easy to talk about a "world class knowledge economy" while ignoring some fundamental issues. Basically, we believe our own propaganda. Like George Bush saying that the US has the best army in the world, we think that our education system is also on top of the world.

Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole wrote last October:

We have, in this country, a great talent for fiction. So great, indeed, that it cannot be confined to the realms of James Joyce, Kate O'Brien and John McGahern. Our fictions are too important to be left to the novelists, so they burst through into public policy.

The finest example of this creative flair is in the story we are telling ourselves about where we go after the Celtic Tiger. We're moving towards "a vibrant, knowledge-based economy". It's all going to be about how smart we are, how skilled our workforce is, how innovative and creative we can be.

The truth is that Ireland is a massively undereducated country. A startling 35 per cent of Irish adults aged between 25 and 64 do not have even a Leaving Certificate.

Our level of working-age population with at least upper secondary-level education is below the averages of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) developed countries and the European Union. More significantly, given our pretensions to be at the leading edge of knowledge economies, we are way behind the top performers. We've got 65 per cent of the working-age population with a Leaving Certificate equivalent. The Czechs have 90 per cent, the US 88 per cent, Canada 85 per cent, Germany 83 per cent, Austria 81 per cent, Korea 76 per cent.

Half a million Irish adults (a quarter of the adult population) are functionally illiterate - a figure that shocked us when it was published in an international study in 1997. But it didn't shock us so much that we know what the figure is now.

Some Irish people unfortunately do not like to have to deal with facts when waffle and blather sells even better.

Long-term planning anyone?

When is the penny going to drop that spin and issuing grants alone, isn't going to bring a conservative society i.e resistant to change, to the level of a world class knowledge economy in just over 5 years?

Irish Politics, Bipartisanship and the 460 people advising Minister Harney on health policy

2007-12-02T15:00:00.000Z

Mary Harney TD, Minister for Health and Children

Two Government ministers provided a vivid illustration of the paralysis at the heart of Irish politics this week when ministers Mary Harney and John Gormley called for a bipartisan approach to cancer services.

Politicians in power take credit for any positive news that they can and apart from the admission of impotence, why would Opposition politicians support a policy that some members of governing parties including a minister, oppose with impunity, at local level?

Perish the thought that Harney and Gormley would for example call for bipartisanship on land rezoning, which has remained unreformed despite 10 years of the corruption planning tribunal or on public sector reform that has been outsourced to the Paris-based think-tank for governments, the OECD.

There was no call either for bipartisanship on the Super VIP Benchmarking payments and Cork TD, Deputy Ciarán Lynch who asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance the number of tax payers in 2006 or the most recent year for which complete figures are available, who returned incomes of €38,000 or less, highlighted a fact, through the reply that a lot of Irish workers do not spend their free time in Macy's .

The amount of €38,000 is the recent pay hike increase that was received by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

Brian Cowen TD replied: I am advised by the Revenue Commissioners that the estimated number of income earners on the income tax records in 2006 earning gross income of €38,000 or less is projected at 1,452,000. Gross income is income before adjustments are made in respect of capital allowances, interest paid, losses, allowable expenses, retirement annuities etc. but after deduction of superannuation contributions by employees.

The figure is an estimate from the Revenue tax-forecasting model using actual data for the year 2004 adjusted as necessary for income and employment growth for the year in question. It is, therefore, provisional and likely to be revised. Cowen said that it should be noted that a married couple who has elected, or has been deemed to have elected, for joint assessment is counted as one tax unit.

Two-thirds of the workforce are earning less than €38,000 annually and two-thirds of private sector workers - - 900,000 - - have no occupational pension.

Compared with the average industrial wage of €32,000, TDs in general are also in clover, earning more than 3 times the level. The country is 15 miles from Leinster House with overnight allowances payable and TDs in North Dublin can collect up to €30,000 annually in local travel expenses.

Then there are the 130 full-time personnel on the public payroll supporting ministers' constituency work. Bertie Ahern has 9 working in his constituency - more people than the total staff of a typical SME firm.

In the Sunday Business Post on Dec 2nd, Vincent Browne provided an illustration of featherbedding in the Department of Health and Children, headed by Mary Harney TD.

In recent years, the Department's operational functions have been hived to to the Health Service Execute (HSE) leaving the Department with a policymaking role.

There are 460 people advising the minister on health policy!

Last week, a minister in the Irish government said that the lack of Irish public sector reform, "is a joke"!

Green Irish Greens in the Soup

2007-11-25T15:12:00.000Z

Our part-time parliament, which is shuttered for about six months of the year, can resemble a theatre in the rare times that it is in session.

This is the busy season for Santa Claus and his elves in the North Pole and our messenger boy/girl politicians at least can look forward to a six-week break starting next month, barring the odd meetings of most of the do-nothing parliamentary committees. There are 23 of them in a system where there is little or no accountability and the overpaid lobby fodder can continue to top up their expense earnings by signing the attendance books.

In our 1920's era governance system, the country is 15 miles from Leinster House and an overnight allowance can be claimed whether or not our over-taxed (nothing got to do with tax!)legislators, actually stay in Dublin.

In reaction to perceived public displeasure about the Super VIP Benchmarking pay rises, Green Party Ministers Gormley and Ryan who are both getting an extra €25,656 and Trevor Sargent who will get an additional €17,716, announced that the money would be diverted to the Green Party, even though it appears that the plan is in violation of electoral law.

Given their failure to object to the pay bonanza, the belated decision to divert the funds for party use has an air of sleaziness about it.

Irish politicians of courage and conviction are a rare specie and Green politicians are as good at following the crowd as others.

Minister for Energy and Natural Resources Eamon Ryan during the week issued a stark warning of climatic Armageddon unless there is a dramatic reduction in global emissions.

"If we ignore this challenge the threat posed is beyond any catastrophe, war, famine or natural disaster which occurred on the planet for hundreds of millions of years," he told the Dáil during a debate on climate change.

Climate change justifies the Faustian bargain for power with the acceptance of corruption and the zero prospect of reform in areas of governance and land rezoning. However, after almost six months in office, where are the radical proposals on climate change?

There are none of course and we will await what the European Commission will propose.

Green Party leader and Minister for the Environment John Gormley, in true Irish ministerial style, is due to set up a panel to advise him on the mechanical biological treatment (MBT) of waste as an alternative to incineration.

Similar to the way the promotion of biofuels was foolishly seen as a simple risk-free alternative to fossil fuels, MBT is in a similar boat. Gormley needs to get an international scientific panel to advise him and it could well say that incineration is a more practical option.

Gormley opposes incineration because his constituents oppose it. Nevertheless, the planning board approved the building of a plant on Dublin’s Poolbeg peninsula.

“Minister Gormley must be the first politician ever that found on appointment to ministerial office that he has less power than when he was an opposition TD,” Labour Party leader Eamonn Gilmore said.

Fine Gael leader said that the Greens "comment on everything and aren't able to implement anything," like the Muppet Show's Statler and Waldorf.

Green Party Senator Dan Boyle owes his position to political patronage such as the members of the hundreds of Sate quangos that he criticises.

Decisions were being made by independent bodies for political reasons because powers had been abrogated in legislation and politicians could not stand over that, Dan Boyle of the Green Party, deputy leader of the Seanad (Upper House of the Irish parliament), said in relation to an Environment Protection Agency go-ahead for the Poolbeg incinerator.

Senators had recently discussed how an ongoing process of abrogating political responsibility to stand-alone bodies was diminishing political decision-making and democratic accountability.

Dan Boyle like the worthies, do-gooders and party hacks who people all the quangos, also owes his position to political patronage. The dead-man walking Taoiseach Bertie Ahern who the Greens in May said had "lost moral authority," because of a torrent of corruption allegations, appointed Boyle to his current position as a national politician.

Santa Claus will see more glacial change than the Irish political process.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has chaired one meeting of a Cabinet sub-committee on climate change since June. Meanwhile, the Greens oppose incineration but do not appear to have a problem with the export of hazardous waste for incineration. They oppose nuclear power but we may well import UK electricity that is generated by nuclear power. Baby-steps and posturing are the responses to climate change.

It all could be termed Irish politics as usual.

Irish Public Sector Biggest and most Powerful Consumer for Private Sector

2007-11-18T06:00:00.000Z

Dr. John Crown

Self-censorship has been in the news in recent times when it was disclosed that a senior manager in Ireland's public broadcaster RTE had excluded the well-known cancer specialist John Crown from a television panel discussion on the lamentable state of Irish cancer services. RTE wished to create "balance" by excluding the one person who was in a position to speak with direct knowledge on the service.

Crown is on record as a critic of the establishment e.g. “It is a shame that the Department of Health have had to be cajoled, humiliated and bullied in public into doing something about it. The disastrous health service we’ve had over the past ten to twenty years reflected a complete lack of planning on the part of the Department. It wasn’t until certain people started to make very public criticisms of the state of the cancer service that they were shamed into doing something about it. I think it’s an awful pity that that’s the way the public discourse has to work in a democracy.”

The same senior RTE manager apparently had no qualms about balance on the same programme before the general election when two leading apologists for Taoiseach Bertie Ahern appeared on a panel of three. Ahern subsequently appointed one of them to the Upper House of the parliament at a cost of €150,000 annually in a redundant role. Small change, some might think but add all the rest of the featherbedding - e.g. the Green Party office manager likely trebled his salary to €161,000 when be became aide-de-camp/gofor for Minister for the Environment John Gormley. The Cabinet and Ministers of State have nearly 130 civil servants and privately-recruited staff working solely on constituency queries, costing the Exchequer at least €4 million annually. Gormley has seven staff working in his private office on ministerial duties and four more in his constituency office.

Senior RTE managers are working in the public sector and compared with an SME manager in the tradable goods/services sector, they have well-paid cushy numbers and why would they wish to rattle the cages of their political masters?

So why would IBEC, the principal representative organisation for Irish business also behave with a level of timidity that is a welcome bonus for politicians?

One obvious explanation is that it doesn't want to get listed on Bertie Ahern's "little black book."

Politicians, in common with adults can have thin skins and act in infantile ways. Look at our history and De Valera's jealousy of Michael Collins. Last May, the Bagehot columnist in the Economist wrote in relation to current British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's petty reaction to Tony Blair's chief of staff Jonathan Powell: According to those in a position to know, Mr Brown has not spoken to Mr Powell since soon after Mr Blair became leader of the Labour Party in 1994, even though he is forced to pass his desk every time he visits the prime minister. Mr Powell's transgression was to laugh when Mr Brown suggested that some of the money he was raising to run the new leader's private office should be handed over to the shadow chancellor.

Many Irish business firms also have a pertinent reason to resist rocking the boat of the permanent government.

The Irish public sector has huge power over the private sector because it is the biggest consumer of goods and services in the State. That power simply buys silence despite the incompetence, waste, lack of accountability and failure to match a modern economy with a credible system of governance.

Last September, the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance confirmed that Budget Day 2008 would include "a major innovation" with the change that “all new spending measures, as well as tax changes, will be brought together and announced as one in a unified way on Budget Day, instead of on a piecemeal basis, as at present”.

Given the glacial pace of change at governance level in Ireland, the "major innovation" is in reality a baby-step.

There is no detail provided on spending across government in say up to 20 categories e.g what is spent on energy, marketing, consultants, information technology etc.

I was advised by the Department of Finance earlier this year, that I would have to go to each Department via Freedom of Information requests to get information on the top 100-200 suppliers to the State. The catch is that each Department can charge the cost, at its discretion, of providing the information.

Senior RTE managers are not the only ones who find it expedient to toe the line (btw that is the correct spelling for the phrase!)

Irish Politics, Brass Necks and Donkeys

2007-11-11T04:28:00.000Z

An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern canvassing in Dublin South Central in May 2007

I recall as a youth reading a number of American journalist John Gunther's (1901-1970) series of "Inside" books that I had got from the Bandon library.

There are two items I remember from Inside Latin America, which was first published in 1939. Gunther recounted how the drunken Bolivian president General Mariano Melgarejo had in 1870 thought that the new British ambassador could be brought down to earth by ordering that he be strapped naked, facing backwards, on a donkey and paraded around La Paz.

The other story also involved a donkey. Politicians in some Brazilian town were so discredited that some citizens nominated a donkey for mayor and the ass won.

It's said that the camel seldom sees his own hump and when it comes to Irish politics it is not always easy to discern who are the donkeys - - the politicians or the voters?

When free education at secondary level was introduced in 1968, there was a concern as to who would do all the "dirty" jobs given that most people would henceforward be "educated." The term brings to mind writer Frank O'Connor's cutting reference to "Mr De Valera's educated government," in a forward to the Eric Cross book The Tailor and Ansty, which was banned in the early 1940's.

Still on the subject of donkeys, writer Seán O Faoláin in a letter to the Irish Times, said in reference to the moral guardians of the Censorship Board that they had made “fools of themselves and an ass of the Minister”—or “a fool of the Minister and asses of themselves.”

Fast-forward to modern Ireland and the expected call for pay restraint came two weeks after the Super VIP Benchmarking awards - it was a decent interval - and was a day before the conferring of honorary doctorates on three "distinguished public servants" at Dublin Castle.

The new doctors had all won considerable pay hikes in the benchmarking bonanza. Secretary General at the Department of the Taoiseach Dermot McCarthy, got a 25% pay rise and his retired predecessor Frank Murray, also got the corresponding increase, in his pension. John Fitzgerald got a 36% pension rise as his successor as Dublin City Manager, received a 36% hike in what can be termed Super VIP Benchmarking. Former Taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald, who presented the awards, also received a 14% pension rise to correspond with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's benchmarking rise.

The Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Tánaiste Brian Cowen, on Thursday displaying brass necks, lectured union leaders about wage restraint following their own salary hikes worth €38,000 and €36,000 respectively.

In the Sunday Independent issue of Nov 4, 2007, senior journalist Willie Kealy wrote on the bleak future facing Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who will get compensation of one year's salary of €310,000 on leaving office and a pension of about €200,000 annually together with a State car for the rest of his life. As for providing for this two children, there is nothing to worry about either. As far back as 1994, Ahern's children were listed as potential beneficiaries of his landlord's will. In the interval, one of them has become a millionaire through a contract with one of Rupert Murdoch's publishing companies while the other is married to a millionaire member of the Westlife boy-band.

And what does the future hold? He has already said he will step down before the next election. So a few more years in office as Taoiseach -- if all goes well -- and after that, what?

A well paid job as President of Europe? There was a time when that seemed a shoo-in. Now with all this muck flying around, all this dirt from the tribunal which shows no sign of abating. Well, they are pragmatic if nothing else in Europe. And they are not going to put themselves offside to do Bertie a favour.

So nothing is guaranteed, except that by the time Bertie Ahern reaches 60, he will probably be out of a job and his best chance of employment will be to try to retain his seat in the next election.

He currently has no woman in his life that we know of. He dotes on his daughters and the grandchildren, but lives alone in Drumcondra. If that job in Brussels is lost, he has probably lost it already. And he does not have to fight another election as Taoiseach. He is that dangerous animal, a man with little left to lose.

In those circumstances, as he looks forward into an old age that could be lonely and unfulfilling, compared to the career and family highs he has tasted in the past, he must be tempted to say to himself, "I can at least make sure it is not a penniless old age." He has four more years of a Taoiseach's salary to collect, at best, and after that a pension. There will be no more dig-outs.

He is now facing into the prospect of being a fixed-income pensioner with no independent source of income and no real assets except his home.

In those circumstances, is it any wonder he said that he would take the €38,000 a year extra salary he has just been granted and the corresponding increase in his pension.

The way he is feeling right now, to turn it down would not only be monumentally foolish, but personally irresponsible. Des O'Malley and Bobby Molloy made such a gesture before, refusing to accept an increase for two years, and they each reckoned that it didn't earn them a single vote in the subsequent election.
And, as for postponing it for a few years ... well he only has a few years left at the highest level of public life.

Forget the old Bertie, the man who hadn't a clue where the next pint would come from and didn't care. The man whose care of his career was fanatical. The man whose fine political judgement was unrivalled. Now he can sometimes be distant, those close to him say. His sense of persecution is fuelled when a favourable poll gets a brief mention on the nine o'clock news, but one showing him on the slide is a big story.

Today's Bertie Ahern is a man on a mission. He's pretty sure his legacy is secured already with the North and the Celtic Tiger and that all the tribunal stuff will eventually fade, probably after he's gone.

No, Bertie Ahern's mission today is to secure his old age.

One can well wonder who think's whom are the donkeys? Bertie Ahern's mission today is to secure his old age - - and 900,000 workers have no occupational pension never mind the gold-plated pension that awaits plain old Bass man himself.

Also revealing this week was the news that climate change is hardly a big priority for Bertie Ahern.

The professed raison d'être/excuse for Green Party leader John Gormley's Faustian bargain for power has also been undermined since June. Bertie delivered on a Cabinet sub-committee on climate change (big, big addition to the laundry list of Green "achievements" to keep the idealists in tune!) and he even attended its only meeting to date!

Impressive indeed !

The polar ice caps melt faster than change in Bertie's Ireland; Gormley's moral compass tarnishes by the day and we sit idly by awaiting for direction from Brussels on climate change.

Who was it that strongly condemned gombeenism in February 2007?

The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques meets the Pope

2007-11-07T03:07:00.000Z

The meeting in Rome on Tuesday between Pope Benedict XVI and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah was a surprise given that it is illegal to publicly practice Christianity in the desert kingdom. Saudi Arabia has existing strong links with the Eternal City having funded the building of its main mosque.

At the first meeting between a Pope and a Saudi monarch, the two discussed the need for greater collaboration between Christians, Muslims and Jews and prospects for a Middle East peace. A Vatican statement said “the presence and hard work of Christians (in Saudi Arabia) was discussed” – seen as a clear reference to the Vatican’s concern over the Christian minority.

In Saudi, December is the busiest month for the religious police , the muttawa - officially known as the Committee for Preventing Vice and Enforcing Virtue. The muttawa try to ensure that traders do not sell anything that could be regarded as a Christmas decoration. Filipinos are particular targets during the Christmas period.

While religions other than Islam are viewed with suspicion, it's preferable to have one for visa purposes.

On one occasion, the Saudi embassy in Brussels rejected a business visa application, as the applicant had entered "none" in the religion box.

Credit is due to King Abdullah for taking a step that can only be viewed as positive.

Remarkable Decades of Change in World but Irish System of Governance Immutable to Reform

2007-11-03T12:02:00.000Z

On June 12, 1987, US President Ronald Reagan delivered a historic speech by the then Berlin Wall, with the Brandenburg Gate in the background, at the other side of the Wall in East Berlin: Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. From the Baltic, south, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same--still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state. Yet it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world. Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar....General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!....As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: "This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality." Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

Just over two years after President Reagan's address in Berlin, the Wall had fallen in a decade when Reagan himself and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, were rare politicians, in challenging conventional economic orthodoxy.

The end of the Iron Curtain in Europe and the adoption by the Chinese Communist Party of a capitalist model, gave a significant acceleration to globalisation together with low inflation and interest rates as prices of Asian manufactured goods fell over a sustained period and Eastern Europe provided the economies of Western Europe with a new source of labour.

People easily take for granted the remarkable decades of change for the better in the world in recent decades.

Just consider that on Jan 1, 1974, Spain, Portugal and Greece were run by dictatorships; Eastern Europe was under the jackboot of a Soviet tyranny as was Russia and Central Asia; Most of Latin America was run by dictatorships; a small number of Asian countries were making remarkable economic advances but most of the region's population was living in extreme poverty; life for most people in the Arabian peninsula hadn't changed in more than a thousand years and most of Africa remained in a cycle of despair including the majority of the population of the advanced economy of the region - South Africa.

In Ireland, we've had tremendous success through becoming an important base for US multinationals and having our farming industry hugely subsidised by other European countries but we should be cautious about self-congratulation in claiming some uniqueness when our current level of prosperity has been so tied to the acceleration of trade and globalisation. There have been huge advances elsewhere.

As we look ahead, globalisation will bring new challenges. The benefit of Chinese goods price deflation will disappear; food prices and other commodities are surging. The era of very low interest rates is behind us, bar a severe recession.

In Ireland, do we need some bad economic times before we confront some serious questions?

How can a country that has taken so long to even introduce a credible broadband system, become a "world-class knowledge economy" in 5 years? Why does it take 29 years to complete the building of a motorway between the two principal cites - Dublin and Cork -, on a small island, when countries like Malaysia have already built a comprehensive infrastructural network in a much shorter time?

In 1955, the Irish Minister for Finance Gerard Sweetnam appointed the 39-year old Thomas Kenneth Whitaker as Secretary of the Department of Finance and in the 1956 budget Sweetnam exempted profits derived from exports, from taxation. The imprint of Whitkaker was clearly to be seen. In 1958, Whitaker's Economic Development white paper became the basis for the First Programme for Economic Expansion.

That was the genesis of the Celtic Tiger and today, almost a half century later, there is not one senior civil servant who is known to the Irish public.

Ireland today is in need of another Whitaker who can get the attention of the school teachers, farmers and small-town solicitors that the our old Ireland system of cronyism and gombeenism produces.

I'm an optimist, which by definition every entrepreneur is but it is realistic to ask, how low do our economic fortunes have to fall before attention is given to reforming a paralysed political system of 1920's/30's vintage with its limited accountability and responsibility?

Where is the Outrage? Gombeenism thrives at home while in Paris, OECD staff work on proposals for Irish public service reform

Pests and the European Parliament

2007-10-26T09:17:00.000+01:00

European Parliament building, Strasbourg, France

This week European Parliament MEPs proposed that spraying pesticides near schools or hospitals should be heavily controlled to safeguard health and food quality.

There would also be a general ban on aerial crop spraying, making it illegal to kill bugs using a method made famous by Alfred Hitchcock's movie North by Northwest.

No doubt, the highly protected agricultural sector would be provided with compensation.

For the pests in the European Parliament whose only exposure to tropical pests is in the rarefied atmosphere of 5-star hotels when on their regular junkets, and the anti-GMerrs, in the comfort of Europe, the mammoth UN environment report that was published on Thursday said:

Losses in total global farm production, due to insect pests, have been estimated at about 1 per cent.

Since 1987 the expansion of cropland has slackened, but land use intensity has increased dramatically. A hectare of cropland, which then yielded on average 1.8 tonnes, now produces 2.5 tonnes.

Unsustainable land use is causing degradation, a threat as serious as climate change and biodiversity loss. It affects up to a third of the world's people, through pollution, soil erosion, nutrient depletion, water scarcity, salinity, and disruption of biological cycles.

The food security of two-thirds of the world's people depends on fertilisers, especially nitrogen.

Population growth, over-consumption and the continued shift from cereal to meat consumption mean food demand will increase to 2.5-3.5 times the present figure.

By 2030 developing countries will probably need 120 million more hectares to feed themselves.

The loss of genetic diversity may threaten food security: 1 animal species make up 90 per cent of all livestock, and 30 crops dominate agriculture, providing an estimated 90 per cent of the world's calories.

False Panaceas for Fools on Biofuels and Organic Food

2007-10-20T13:15:00.000+01:00

Conventional wisdom is dangerous when it comes to climate change remedies and with politicians likely to follow the crowd, it's well to be on guard for what is termed the law of unintended consequences.

So for example, if you believe that you are contributing to alleviating climate change or protecting the environment, by buying organic food, you may be dead wrong. You may also believe that the European Union target to increase the share of biofuels used in transport to 10% by 2020, is a good thing. It may well not be. You may also regard Ryanair's Michael O'Leary's rejection of emission curbs on aviation as pernicious but just consider: Every year, the world loses a forest area the size of Ireland. This accounts for 18 percent of annual carbon dioxide emissions, more than from the world’s entire transport sector. Deforestation must be reversed not accelerated by for example biofuel production. (SEE: Finfacts article).

In recent weeks, there have been warnings that the greenhouse gas situation is being made worse by the emphasis on biofuels. Increased palm oil production in for example Indonesia will accelerate the destruction of the rain forests while in India and China, water supplies will be endangered.

The poor of the poor are at most risk from the jump in grain prices that the increase in subsidised biofuel production in the US has triggered.

The damage to the environment may in fact be worse than the disease.

Dr. Norman Borlaug (1914- ), winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, is called the Father of the "Green Revolution" and in the words of US Senator Charles Grassley, has "saved more lives than any other person who has ever lived."

Last week, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, demanded an international five-year ban on producing biofuels to combat soaring food prices.

Switzerland's Jean Ziegler said the conversion of arable land for plants used for green fuel had led to an explosion of agricultural prices which was punishing poor countries forced to import their food at a greater cost.

"232kg of corn is needed to make 50 litres of bioethanol," Ziegler said. "A child could live on that amount of corn for a year."

Using land for biofuels would result in "massacres", he said, predicting a reduction in the amount of food aid sent to developing countries by richer ones.

"It's a total disaster for those who are starving."

Ziegler's proposal for a five-year moratorium, which he plans to submit to the UN General Assembly on October 25, is aiming to ban the conversion of land for the production of biofuels.

Ziegler said he hoped that by the time the moratorium was lifted science would have made sufficient progress to be able to create "second generation" biofuels, made from agricultural waste or from non-agricultural plants such as jatropha, which grows naturally on arid ground.

Taking Brazil as an example, Ziegler said he deplored the fact that sugar cane plantations, whose products were used for biofuels, were spreading at the expense of food-producing land.

He said ten hectares (100,000 square metres) of food-producing land could sustain an average of seven to ten farmers, whereas the same area could only produce enough sugar cane for one farmer.

The use of non-food plants such as jatropha, shows that it is not a simple issue of saying one solution is good, another bad.

Ibrahim Rehman, the director of action programs at The Energy and Resource Institute in India, says that in the absence of a global consensus on specific principles, criteria or standards for bioenergy production, there are indications - especially in the developing world - that the biofuels agenda is being pushed forward with limited understanding of social, environmental and economic implications.

A further complication is that the case for biofuels is often oversimplified. For instance, in India it is argued that crops for biofuels production can be planted on 106 million acres of wasteland - even though a major part of this so-called wasteland is under various uses, not lying vacant, as agricultural planners may assume.

Rehman says that in other situations, biofuels initiatives likely will involve planting on land already in production, or cultivating crops that would otherwise contribute to the food chain - with rising prices of U.S. corn and of cereals in China as cases in point. It will be crucial to properly assess and determine the economics of growing our fuel and its implications on food security.

To an extent, several pilot initiatives are addressing this lack of specific criteria for biofuels production, thus contributing to the nascent development of standards and practices.

In India, one such step in the direction of developing practices and standards is the joint biofuels initiative of BP and The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi. The project focuses on growing jatropha - a non-food crop that thrives in conditions where food crops tend to fail - on more than 19,700 acres of land in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

The project encompasses and assesses the complete biodiesel production process, and very poor farmers are involved in measuring jatropha's benefits in augmenting incomes for marginalized sections of society.

The World Bank in its World Development Report 2008, (WDR) which was published on October 19, 2007, says that promising new opportunities for mitigating climate change and creating large new markets for agriculture have emerged through the production of biofuels, stimulated by high energy prices. But few of the current biofuels programs are economically viable, and many pose social (rising food prices) and environmental (deforestation) risks. To date, production in industrial countries has developed behind high protective tariffs on biofuels and with large subsidies.

These policies hurt developing countries that are, or could become, efficient producers in profitable new export markets. Poor consumers also pay higher prices for food staples as grain prices rise in world markets directly due to the diversion of grain to biofuels or indirectly due to land conversion away from food production.

What is the future for the global food supply? From World Development Report 2008
Agriculture has been largely successful in meeting the world’s effective demand for food. Yet more than 800 million people remain food insecure, and agriculture has left a huge environmental footprint. And the future is increasingly uncertain. Models predict that food prices in global markets may reverse their long term downward trend, creating rising uncertainties about global food security. Climate change, environmental degradation, rising competition for land and water, higher energy prices, and doubts about future adoption rates for new technologies all present huge challenges and risks that make predictions difficult. To meet projected demand, cereal	production will have to increase by nearly 50 percent and meat production by 85 per cent from 2000 to 2030. Added to this is the burgeoning demand for agricultural feed stocks for biofuels, which have already pushed up world food prices. Managing the aggregate response of agriculture to rising demand will require good policy and sustained investments, not business as usual. Sharply increased investment is especially urgent in Sub-Saharan Africa, where food imports are predicted to more than double by 2030 under a business-as-usual scenario, the impact of climate change is expected to be large with little capacity to cope, and progress continues to be slow in raising per capita food availability.

The WDR says that Brazil is the world’s largest and most efficient producer of biofuels, based on its low-cost production of sugarcane. But few other developing countries are likely to be efficient producers with current technologies. Policy decisions on biofuels need to devise regulations or certification systems to mitigate the potentially large environmental footprint of biofuels production. Increased public and private investment in research is important to develop more efficient and sustainable production processes based on feedstocks other than food staples.

Dr. Norman Borlaug is presented the Congressional Gold Medal by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, President George W. Bush and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on July 17, 2007 - - Professor M.S.Swaminathan, President, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences of India, said at the ceremony: The impact of the Borlaug-led Green Revolution symphony will be clear from the fact that during 1964-68, Indian farmers increased wheat production in four years by an order greater than that achieved during the preceding 4000 years.

Organic Food

Peter Melchett of the Soil Association, Britain's leading organic lobby group, says that environmental concerns, rather than health benefits, are now cited by British consumers as their main justification for buying organic food.

The Economist says that there is no clear evidence that conventional food is harmful or that organic food is nutritionally superior.

The Economist says that not everyone agrees that organic farming is better for the environment. Perhaps the most eminent critic of organic farming is Dr. Norman Borlaug, the father of the “green revolution”, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 and an outspoken advocate of the use of synthetic fertilisers to increase crop yields.

He claims the idea that organic farming is better for the environment is “ridiculous” because organic farming produces lower yields and therefore requires more land under cultivation to produce the same amount of food.

Thanks to synthetic fertilisers, Dr. Borlaug points out, global cereal production tripled between 1950 and 2000, but the amount of land used increased by only 10%. Using traditional techniques such as crop rotation, compost and manure to supply the soil with nitrogen and other minerals would have required a tripling of the area under cultivation. The more intensively you farm, Dr. Borlaug contends, the more room you have left for rainforest.

What of the claim that organic farming is more energy-efficient? Lord Melchett points out for example that the artificial fertiliser used in conventional farming is made using natural gas, which is “completely unsustainable”.

The Economist says that Anthony Trewavas, a biochemist at the University of Edinburgh, counters that organic farming actually requires more energy per tonne of food produced, because yields are lower and weeds are kept at bay by ploughing. And Mr Pollan notes that only one-fifth of the energy associated with food production across the whole food chain is consumed on the farm: the rest goes on transport and processing.

The Economist says that the most environmentally benign form of agriculture appears to be “no till” farming, which involves little or no ploughing and relies on cover crops and carefully applied herbicides to control weeds. This makes it hard to combine with organic methods (though some researchers are trying). Too rigid an insistence on organic farming's somewhat arbitrary rules, then—copper, a heavy metal, can be used as an organic fungicide because it is traditional—can actually hinder the adoption of greener agricultural techniques.

Norman Borlaug

Named by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 most influential minds of the 20th century, Norman Borlaug was born in 1914 to Norwegian-American parents outside Cresco in the north-eastern part of the American State of Iowa.

In 1944, Dr. Borlaug participated in the Rockefeller Foundation's pioneering technical assistance program in Mexico, where he was a research scientist in charge of wheat improvement. For the next sixteen years, he worked to solve a series of wheat production problems that were limiting wheat cultivation in Mexico and to help train a whole generation of young Mexican scientists.

The work in Mexico not only had a profound impact on Dr. Borlaug's life and philosophy of agriculture research and development, but also on agricultural production, first in Mexico and later in many parts of the world.

It was on the research stations and farmers' fields of Mexico that Dr. Borlaug developed successive generations of wheat varieties with broad and stable disease resistance, broad adaptation to growing conditions across many degrees of latitude, and with exceedingly high yield potential.

These new wheat varieties and improved crop management practices transformed agricultural production in Mexico during the 1940's and 1950's and later in Asia and Latin America, sparking what today is known as the "Green Revolution." Because of his achievements to prevent hunger, famine and misery around the world, it is said that Dr. Borlaug has "saved more lives than any other person who has ever lived."

Finfacts 2006 report: Enormous tasks ahead to feed the world, says former Nobel Peace Prize recipient

Finfacts Climate Change Reports can be found in the lower right-hand column of the home page.

Ozone Man's Vindication

2007-10-13T09:13:00.000+01:00

Al Gore's award as co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, is a worthy vindication for a man who has promoted environmental issues from his early years in politics.

In the 1992 presidential campaign, President George H.W. Bush nicknamed Gore, then Bill Clinton's running mate, "Ozone Man" and portrayed him as a threat to Americans because of his perceived wacky positions on the environment. Eight years later, Gore was contesting the presidency against Bush's son and "misunderestimated" him to use a Bushism.

American columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote in 2004: Upon losing a game at the 1925 Baden-Baden tournament, Aaron Nimzowitsch, the great chess theoretician and a superb player, knocked the pieces off the board, jumped on the table and screamed, "How can I lose to this idiot?"

Within months of Gore's searing loss of the presidency as decreed by the Supreme Court, President George W. Bush exempted the US from emission targets that were set by the Kyoto Protocol of 1997.

For many, the new president confirmed the view that he was an idiot. Bush in fact wasn't exactly the Neanderthal that his poorly communicated position suggested - see letter of March 13, 2001 to US Senators. A President Gore would also have had a serious challenge in selling climate change to the Republican controlled Congress at that time.

Al Gore Nobel Peace Prize Press Conference

Gore like the superrich Irish rock musician Bono, has been successful as an advocate. Advocacy however, is only the start of the process of reaction and it's the easy part.

Wealthy celebrities can promote their cause, without in any way risking their lifestyle and they often enhance their earning power. The New York Times says that Gore is a multimillionaire who has built a media and high-tech empire around himself and his environmental work. He is an adviser to Google, sits on the board of Apple and is the chairman and cofounder of Current TV, a cable network with 38 million subscribers. He receives up to $175,000 per speaking appearance, although he waives or reduces his fee for some non-profit companies and schools. Fast Company magazine has estimated his net worth at more than $100 million.

The rich like Bono and Gore can buy conscience salving carbon credits and solutions for climate change would be painless for them.

For others, the hard part is ahead.

The jump in the price of oil in the 1970's coinciding with environmental concerns moving up the political agenda in the rich world, ushered in significant advances in technology that has reduced both pollution and increased oil use efficiency. The emphasis on climate change will bring forward a technology leap in decades ahead that will prepare the world for a time when oil will be more costly and harder to extract - e.g. from tar sands - than it is conventionally.

The difficult choices ahead are exemplified by the impact of the ramping up of biofuel production has had on in pushing up grain prices in the US and the warning this week that India and China will face water shortages if they go ahead with their biofuel plans.

The poor of the poor in places like Africa may face the biggest threat from climate change but some remedies may hit them in the here and now. Where does most of the wheat for the World Food Program come from?

Politicians have had little to say on expected lifestyle changes ahead if any, so far and in Ireland, Green Party minister Eamon Ryan has called for a cross-party consensus on climate change measures, suggesting a reluctance to make hard choices. In an ideal world, it would be nice to get all politicians to agree on proposals that would sacrifice short-term popularity. However, where parties in power take credit for everything of a positive slant, apart from the weather,
Ryan's spread the responsibility strategy, will hardly work.

Al Gore Debates Global Warming

Ryan's ministerial colleague John Gormley does not engender much optimism either given the muddle that he has made of waste management policy. He plans to spend millions in hiring international experts to advise him, even though he has already set forth various versions of his own position.

Ireland is a very small part of the climate change issue and the people in Emerging Economies have much further catch-up in spreading the conventional carbon-rich first world lifestyle. More cars, more air conditioning, more showers, more clothes washing, are just part of the emerging scenario.

Just consider how hard it is to get a global trade agreement.

The first world could impose carbon taxes on imports from poorer countries but wasn't it precisely the deflationary impact of those imports that has kept our interest rates in the first world at single digits for the past two decades?

To borrow the words of Winston Churchill in November 1942: this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning

So let's give two cheers for Al Gore's prize!

Related articles on climate change can be found on the lower end of the right-hand column of the Finfacts home page.

The Hidden Ireland and the Vested Interests with the Grip on the Public Megaphone

2007-10-10T14:14:00.000+01:00

Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Brian Cowen TD - - After the last sham benchmarking, it is "likely" that the Benchmarking Body will take account of the public service pensions that would require the equivalent of 28% of salary for 40 years in the private sector! More...

This morning on RTE Radio 1's flagship news programme Morning Ireland, a representative of the Aer Lingus pilots/shareholders, outlined their case for the application of a model in relation to international bases, which the airline may establish, that is the antithesis of the model that has been the central pillar of Irish economic development for the last half-century i.e. principally American companies could set up operations in Ireland and operate in accordance with local market conditions.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern on Tuesday had given the pilots' union a hope of a fudge on conditions for pilots at the new base in Belfast, by saying that both sides should resume talks. It's a tack that has worked fine for a while during times of plenty, with the likes of sham benchmarking, but sometimes a clear line must be drawn.

Some time later on Morning Ireland, a representative of the Irish Medical Association outlined why doctors are threatening a strike at Dublin's Beaumont Hospital because of the reduction in overtime. Not too long ago, the whinge was that junior doctors were expected to work too long. Surprise! surprise!

In both cases - excess and inadequate overtime, the ostensible concern is safety of patients.

Another morning it could be medical consultants carping about salaries of over €200,000 being "mickey-mouse" money or teacher unions whinging about some grievance, all on behalf of the patients again or the school children.

In the hidden Ireland, there are hundreds of thousands with no job security and on terms and benefits that pale in comparison with those of the vested interests that have a firm grip on the public megaphone.

IBEC, which represents large Irish employers, said on Tuesday that in the period 1999 to 2006, compensation per private sector employee in Ireland rose by 42%, compared to 15% in the euro area, and just 7.5% in Germany.

Politicians pay increased about 90% in the period and the rest of the public service in the period 2001-2006 saw their pay increase by 38% (additional staff are excluded in arriving at figure) compared with a rise of 19% in the average industrial wage which is €32,000 - not too much more than Trevor Sargent TD, who lives in Balbriggan, North Dublin, claimed in travel expenses last year.

The Tánaiste and Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen said last week that the Benchmarking Body in making comparisons is likely to give greater weight to the value of the public service pension package "in view of developments in relation to pensions across the economy in recent years."

Likely???

A private sector worker can provide for the equivalent of a public service pension for a maximum of two-thirds of final salary for retirement. However, 28% of salary would have to be put aside every year for 40 years to do so.

In the private sector, there are 900,000 workers without any occupational coverage.

Having a grip of the public megaphone pays dividends big time and the politicians are good at feathering their own nests.

One can well ask, where is the outrage from the hidden Ireland?

Anyone for Benchmarking.....but perish the thought that there would be public sector reform.

Happy 10th Birthday Irish Planning Corruption Tribunal; Land Rezoning Reform: ZERO

2007-10-06T08:35:00.000+01:00

Dublin Castle, the location of public corruption tribunals -Politicians were revealed to have sold their integrity for as low as €3,000.

The corrupt land rezoning system that makes multi-millionaire of farmers and others, is immune from reform.

Irish politicians are not known for political courage or conviction, whether in the area of social policy that is left to the Courts or economic issues that would challenge vested interests.

For more than four decades, the Irish population has been threatened with shame and embarrassment by being hauled before the courts for non-payment of a television licence - or let's call it a tax, for this purpose.

During much of that time, anyone who could evade taxes, did it on a massive scale and to borrow a line from the late Queen of Mean, Leona Helmsley, who recently hit the news by willing her dog $12 million: "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes."

Some of our little people, were charmed by a political leader such as Charles Haughey and bought into a plot similar to the James Stewart 1946 film It's A Wonderful Life.

In our history, the name "Oliver Cromwell" and the word "landlord" has induced frisson in many an Irish person.

Haughey's mentor, current Taoiseach Bertie Ahern however has done a good makeover on the word "landlord" with another sequel to the James Stewart story. This time, the angel Clarence in the person of Michael Wall brings a case full of cash to the distraught "George Bailey." The angel as the landlord, not only wills his house to the tenant but in the event of the tenant's death, to the latter's children.

There are believers in UFOs and yarns but beyond stories of sterling and dollars, there are two striking aspects to the Irish Planning Corruption Tribunal that will celebrate its tenth anniversary next month.

News of the nexus between land rezoning - Ireland's crack cocaine - and politics is no news. Secondly, after a decade of public confirmation of corruption, the system that spawned the corruption, has been subject to ZERO reform.

The days of the brown envelope may be past but anyone who believes that the incentives for more subtle forms of corruption have abated, is an idiot, given the huge value changes that rezoning decisions, or the prospect of them, trigger.

Is there a prospect of change? Absolutely not.

My mother used to say to expect nothing and you won't be disappointed. In that regard, it is arguable that the Green Party leadership has done more damage to the reputation of politics in recent times, than anyone else.

John Gormley's Faustian bargain for power is not tied to measurable objectives such as changing the corrupt rezoning system but to more stellar ones such as saving the polar ice-cap. While important too, the reality is that an Irish politician, representing 4 million from a global population of 6.5 billion, has to comply with EU targets and piggy-back on the credit of others from more significant economies, if there will be anything to brag about.

The Irish Times reported last May: Green Party leader Trevor Sargent described the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern as a political "dead man walking" and claimed no party would be willing to serve in a coalition government led by him because of the questions about his personal finances.

He said he could not "see any party to be honest accepting the moral authority which is expected of a taoiseach with Bertie Ahern in that office".

"I feel that Bertie Ahern as a result of the Tánaiste essentially calling him a liar is politically now a dead man walking. When people vote for Fianna Fáil the question will be on their minds as to who they are voting for as leader because it's very likely it won't be Bertie Ahern."

He added: "The questions of his own personal finances and his relations with individuals which he didn't want to make public but has been made public, does, I believe, call for a new start in Irish politics where standards are set at the very highest level which take out any confusion about vested interests and who controls decision making in Government."

Trust me? And the same people bewail widespread cynicism!

Within weeks, Trevor Sargent avidly drank the soup despite the cant on moral authority and became a Minister in Ahern's Government!

On September 26th, Green Party Leader John Gormley spoke in support of Bertie Ahern in a Dáil confidence debate: When the Green Party made the decision to enter Government last June, its members knew a process was in train and that the Taoiseach was due to give evidence to the Mahon tribunal. It has been our consistent line that we will await the outcome of that tribunal. It is important that the tribunal be allowed to conduct its work unimpeded and that no attempt is made to prejudge the outcome.

Consistent? Four months is a long time to be consistent!

Change does happen eventually in Ireland but don't doubt that it's at a slower pace than the glacial speed in the Arctic and the penny may well drop at some point for the Dr Faustus of modern Irish politics.

The message on the one tax - the television licence - that continues to get promotion on the broadcasting airwaves, has also changed in recent times.

Besides scaring the little people, business owners who may be dawdling the day away watching trash daytime TV, are now also under threat of shame and embarrassment not only in the courts but in front of staff, when an inspector calls.

That's progress at least, if not a little more democratic but dare anyone impinge on the potential bonanzas for farmers - who are already largely dependent for most of their income on European taxpayers, and continue to have the opportunity of a double-dip with the system of rezoning, paid for dearly by house purchasers!

John Gormley's Planet Bertie Speech Feb 2007

Irish Politics and the Value of "Values" - - Minister for the Environment and Green Party leader says in Feb 2007 that the Fianna Fáil party is "without vision or values" and that Michael McDowell, then PD leader was Bertie Ahern's Tammy Wynette - Stand by your Man - a role Gormley plays months later.

Gormley may well have done more damage to the reputation of Irish politics than Bertie Ahern because of the huge gulf between his words and actions.

Postscript: It will be reassuring that a poll apparently conducted by the Sunday Independent among 400 people on Friday, by a team of "professional telephone pollsters", has found that the public's support for Bertie Ahern has not wavered.

The identities of the "professional telephone pollsters" is not given in contrast with polls published by other newspapers. Readers have to make up their own minds if the poll is a figment of someone's imagination.

Whether it's the Wall Street Journal, the Irish Independent or the Irish Times, no serious newspaper has its staff call people from the phone book and then present it as a poll.

If the poll did take place, it's clear that it wasn't scientific.

Anyway, the Taoiseach's satisfaction rating "remains rock solid" at 50 per cent, five points ahead of Mr Kenny (45 per cent), with the new Labour leader, Eamon Gilmore at 43 per cent.

The Greens leader, John Gormley, "will be heartened" by his emergence as the second most popular leader (47 per cent), a possible reflection of his continued support for Mr Ahern (what a surprise???), and of his party honouring its deal to stay in Government, in the face of huge political and media pressure in the aftermath of the Taoiseach's evidence to the Mahon Tribunal.

The so-called "poll" appears to be another front in a newspaper war.

Sunday Business Post Political Correspondent Pat Leahy writes:

The Taoiseach’s future has become a sort of ideological battleground between two newspapers, neither of which takes prisoners.

The Sunday Independent has followed its abrupt pre-election u-turn by backing Ahern aggressively in its news pages and in many of its opinion columns. The Irish Daily Mail - and particularly its Sunday edition, a direct competitor for mid-market readers - has hounded Ahern relentlessly and mercilessly.

It is a brutal commercial conflict, personalised by the antipathy many of the journalists on each paper appear to feel for their rivals, an antipathy that is openly acknowledged. Recently one Sunday Independent columnist decried the ‘‘British newspaper’’ for trying to take down an ‘‘elected Irish Taoiseach’’.

The Mail responds by boasting of its scoops on Ahern’s finances and sneering at the Sunday Independent’s sudden conversion to Ahern’s cause.

The Mail says the facts are against Ahern; the Sunday Independent says the people are on his side.Maybe both will turn out to be right. But Ahern has fought his last election as leader of his party; the support of the people is not as important for him as it was before May.

And one thing is certain: Fianna Fail will not fight an election to save him.

The Minister for Good News Strikes Again!

2007-09-30T10:20:00.000+01:00

Irish business related news was dominated again this week by property and the Minister for Good News a.k.a. Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Micheál Martin, led a trade mission to the US, with recycled announcements ready for issue each day.

The ESRI advised the Government to let the Irish property market readjust itself, to a more sustained level. Quite a lot of non-socialists like the way markets work - - when it suits them, of course!

The more exciting property news was on the international front. Garrett Kelleher's Shelbourne Developments launched the promotion of the sale of units in the 150-storey Chicago Spire, which will be North America's tallest building and Ballymore Properties announced that it had acquired a 95% interest in the 60-storey Manchester Piccadilly Tower project, which is planned to be Europe's tallest residential property. Irish developer Sean Dunne must have felt envious as he prepares to do battle with the Nimbies of Ballsbridge in South Dublin in respect of his planning application for a 37-storey tower. Of course, developers themselves are not averse to being afflicted with the Nimby disease, when it suits them!

The investment of more than €40 billion by Irish investors and banks in commercial property, principally overseas, will undoubtedly have some benefits for the Irish economy. Some rental income will make its way home and banks like Anglo Irish will continue to do well from it.

As to the trade-off with the emasculation of the Irish-owned tradable goods/export sector, the impact will be evident as labour intensive multinationals shut shop.

What Minister Micheál Martin thinks about issues like this, he keeps to himself. It's easier to brag about becoming a world-class knowledge economy in six years. Besides, hadn't he a rake of good news Stateside this week to show the begrudgers at home that he was bringing back the bacon!

One of the few successes that Martin hasn't claimed credit for, is Denis O'Brien's Digicel in the Caribbean.

Digicel, which has been of the rare significant Irish related business successes of recent years, received recognition in this week's issue of the Economist:

The Irish are coming

WHEN Digicel, an Irish mobile-phone operator, decided to invest heavily in Haiti last year, it raised eyebrows. How on earth did Digicel's maverick owner, Dennis O'Brien, hope to make money in such a poor country? “You don't look at GDP. You ignore that,” says Mr O'Brien. Sure enough, Digicel signed up new customers so fast that the company had to rewrite its business plan after the first week. After just 15 months it has signed up 1.7m customers, compared with the 1m shared by its two rivals, Comcel and Haitel. Digicel's assault on Haiti is only the latest in a series of Caribbean conquests. Since the company set up in Jamaica in April 2001 it has established a presence in 22 markets in the region and has amassed some 5m customers. Mr O'Brien says he has invested $1.9 billion in total, including $260m in Haiti.

Trade Missions and Spin

A trade mission requires the spin that a ministerial presence can conjure up business like an illusionist. So on this occasion, Enterprise Ireland had thin gruel to work with in respect of new announcements and in substitute, it arranged contract signing ceremonies in respect of past business deals - as if busy people have time for this carry-on every day!

On Tuesday, Minister Micheál Martin made the first of several announcements, with the heading: Limerick Firm scoops massive contract on US Trade Mission - - the granting of the contract clearly had nothing to do with the trade mission.

The biggest announcement was headed: Minister Martin Announces $300M Energy Deal for Airtricity - - Airtricity linked projects in Texas announced in 2006 and early 2007. The arranged signing ceremony, was in respect of a wind turbine purchase agreement with General Electric.

The danger is that when making announcements, many of which are part of a routine of actionless action, become the main function of a minister, the spin can become the reality.

Last month, the Irish Exporters Association lauded the success of the Government's "Asia-Pacific" strategy and said it should be applied in Europe.

The claimed "success" is simply a fantasy.

Irish Trade Statistics: Policymakers opt for Spin and Delusion rather than confront challenging facts

President Sarkozy calls for increase in European Central Bank key interest rate!!!

2007-09-24T18:31:00.000+01:00

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been baiting his compatriot Jean-Claude Trichet, European Central Bank President in recent months to cut interest rates and give politicians a greater role in ECB decision making.

Ten years ago, they crossed swords when Sarkozy was Budget Minister and Trichet was President of the Banque de France.

The above headline is a joke because it would never happen.

Former Federal Chairman Alan Greenspan says in his book The Age of Turbulence (click for excerpt):

The Federal Reserve's pre-1979 track record in heading off inflationary pressures was not a distinguished one. In part, that earlier history was a consequence of poor forecasting and analysis, but it also reflected pressures from populist politicians inherently biased toward lower interest rates. During my eighteen-and-a-half-year tenure, I cannot remember many calls from presidents or Capitol Hill for the Fed to raise interest rates. In fact, I believe there was none. As recently as August 1991, Senator Paul Sarbanes, in response to what he considered intolerably high interest rates, sought to remove voting authority on the FOMC [the board that controls the federal funds rate, the primary lever of monetary policy] from what he perceived were the "inherently hawkish" presidents of the Federal Reserve banks. Interest rates declined with the 1991 recession, and the proposal was shelved.

I regret to say that Federal Reserve independence is not set in stone. FOMC discretion is granted by statute and can be withdrawn by statute. I fear that my successors on the FOMC, as they strive to maintain price stability in the coming quarter century, will run into populist resistance from Congress, if not from the White House. As Fed chairman, I was largely spared such pressures because long-term interest rates, especially mortgage interest rates, declined persistently throughout my tenure.

It's a great argument for central bank independence to keep in mind that politicians would never call for higher rates despite the justification.

Sarkozy tells ECB to follow Fed and cut rates; Merkel and Trichet strongly defend the central bank's independence

Hedge Fund Managers, Cold Sweats and Soothing Words from a Psychologist

2007-09-21T16:26:00.000+01:00

The American writer Tom Wolfe termed bondtraders "Masters of the Universe" in his 1987 novel Bonfire of the Vanities.

It was the year of the Black Monday market crash and also one where another work of art had a big impact on the attitude of the public to business - Michael Douglas playing asset-stripper Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street. (see his famous "Greed is Good" address to shareholders.)

Fast -forward 20 years and the hedge fund manager has replaced the bondtrader as a Master of the Universe - or so they think!

Top 25 hedge fund earners raked in more than $14 billion in fees in 2006 - equivalent to the GDP of Jordan or Uruguay

The big cats get lots of cream and today, the Forbes magazine list of the top 400 richest Americans has more than half who are hedge fund or private equity managers.

Not all the Mr 20%'s are plutocrats (the deal apart from most of their earnings being treated as capital gains, resulting in people like Warren Buffett's secretary paying a high tax rate - Buffett calls hedge fund managers "helpers - gives managers 20% of profits or more, together with fund fees of 2-5%.

What has been striking in recent years is that average returns are far from jaw-dropping compared with general market returns.

This week the New York Times had a story on the reaction to hedge fund losses in August when the general market advanced. Many readers must have enjoyed the schadenfreude.

A Times report said that after years of eye-popping returns, sudden losses can be wrenching. Aware of the psychological impact that high-pressure trading can have, several funds have retained psychologists to counsel stressed managers.

“It has been a very challenging period for these people,” said Jonathan F. Katz, a psychologist who works with large hedge funds. “I have seen people shaken, their confidence eroded. They are upset and depressed.”

The writer noted that such anxieties become all the more acute when taken with the boundless spending habits developed at the height of the hedge fund bubble.

As an example, Katz cites a client who, in the middle of the market turmoil in August, found himself closing on an expensive apartment in Manhattan.

“All of a sudden, two or three of his major positions were down,” Katz said. “He was on an emotional roller coaster. He had put himself out there, and now he felt horrible because he had lost his firm tons of money.”

The Times says such distress can result in what some call a social contagion, as hedge fund executives let their woes at work affect their personal lives. Investors have said that their golf scores soar, that they lose their appetites and wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat!

To be sure, many investors are cool headed enough to not let inevitable setbacks derail them. But others find it hard to keep their sense of self insulated from losses.

“Some people are debilitated by it,” said Ari Kiev, a psychiatrist who works principally for SAC Capital, the hedge fund founded by Steven A. Cohen. “You can’t sleep; you can’t eat; you have catastrophic thoughts about losing your house.”

The Times says that a prominent hedge fund investor, who like the other executives who discussed their anxieties asked not to be identified, spoke of a crisis of confidence. “

"It’s an intellectual destabilization,” he said. “All of a sudden, your funds are down 5 percent and the S.& P. is down 1 percent. Once you were master of the universe, but the market makes you humble.”

Humble for how long?

Some people are debilitated by it - yes indeed - such as those at the bottom of the pyramid who are subject to foreclosures.

Pious Platitudes and Climate Change

2007-09-14T07:47:00.000+01:00

View of rising Earth about five degrees above the Lunar horizon, taken on December 22, 1968 - - This is one of the more famous images of the Earth from the Apollo program, taken by the Apollo 8 astronauts as they became the first humans to circumnavigate the Moon.
The rising Earth is about five degrees above the lunar horizon in this telephoto view taken from the Apollo 8 spacecraft near 110 degrees east longitude. The horizon, about 570 kilometers (250 statute miles) from the spacecraft, is near the eastern limb of the Moon as viewed from the Earth.

On the earth, the sunset terminator crosses Africa. The south pole is in the white area near the left end of the terminator. North and South America are under the clouds. The lunar surface probably has less pronounced colour than indicated by this print. Photo: NASA -
US National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The issue of climate change is very important but the danger of misguided good intentions has been illustrated this week by the impact that the encouragement of biofuel production will have on food prices, in particular for the poor in developing countries and also the risk of damage to the environment.

A report prepared for a ministerial meeting by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said governments should end subsidies for biofuels, as the demand for grain for the alternative energy industry result in surging food prices and the potential destruction of natural habitats, including rain forests.

The European Union target for 2020 that 10% of energy used in the EU should come from plants, has been called into question.

Brice Lalonde, the head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s round table on sustainable development, said on Wednesday that it may not be possible to hit the target using “sustainable” methods, as called for by European Union leaders in March.

Lalonde, a French former environment minister, said: “The message was to be careful and take a long hard look at the issues. Several people were very blunt in saying that you cannot ask nature to do everything. You cannot feed people and soak up carbon and protect biodiversity and fuel cars.”

Forest burning puts Indonesia in the third rank of greenhouse gas emitters after the US and China. It is ramping up palm oil production for biofuels and the huge Kalimantan rainforest peatlands are under serious threat. When the forests are cleared the natural carbon sink that is rich in methane gas combusts and much of South-East Asia gets covered in smog.

There are many very big challenges to address in relation to climate change.

It was for example reported this week that Opec countries' demand for oil is growing prodigiously - it is rising at 2½ times the global average rate - reducing the amount they can supply to the rest of the world.

Jeff Rubin, chief economist of CIBC World Markets in Toronto, said oil cartel Opec countries and other oil producers like Russia and Mexico were "cannibalising" their own production. According to the International Energy Agency, the rich countries' energy watchdog, Opec accounted for 22 per cent of the roughly 8m barrels a day increase in world oil demand between 2000 and 2006.

Ireland of course is a small fry when it comes to climate change and our principal role is to comply with EU plans.

Minister for the Environment and Green Party leader John Gormley TD said last month that a cabinet sub committee on climate change, which will be meeting this month, will have a central role in formulating and implementing Government policies and initiatives in this area.

"The establishment of a special cabinet sub committee, which includes the Taoiseach, is an indication of the priority this Government is attaching to addressing climate change," Gormley said. "The committee and the Government have an ambitious and challenging programme of work ahead in tackling the climate change issue, in both the shorter and longer term."

The Minister said, "I envisage that by the end of the year there will be a number of positive initiatives on reducing emissions in Ireland. These include proposals for rebalancing VRT and motor tax, the establishment of a climate change commission, and ambitious new energy efficiency targets for new homes."

Gormley's comments on policy so far have been confusing.

He opposes incineration as an alternative to landfill and says that alternative technologies, such as Mechanical and Biological Treatment, built on a smaller scale, provided much better scope for reducing reliance on landfill. However at the same time, he says that European and national standards need to be set for these technologies to ensure they can operate to the highest possible standards.

Gormley said he would be issuing directions to local authorities "to ensure that local authorities do not introduce any measures to effectively skew the market in favour of either landfill or incineration by directing or guaranteeing waste streams to such facilities."

The Minister said on September 3rd that an independent international review of regional waste plans would be carried out, which will examine the potential contribution of technologies such as Mechanical and Biological Treatment.

Simply, Gormley has said what his policy is but at the same time will get an independent international review to produce a report that may well contradict it.

"In the context of this review I will also consider increasing the landfill levy from its current low rate of €15. As part of this I will also examine whether it may be necessary to extend the levy to include municipal incinerators. I do not see why incineration should not be subject to the same financial regime as landfills," Gormley said.

This is duplicity cloaked in the veneer of reason.

As an incineration plant requires significant capital investment, the message Gormley is sending is that he will ensure that such ventures are doomed. He is Minister for the Environment of a country that sends 70% of its hazardous waste overseas for incineration!

It's very much in the Irish political tradition of self-back slapping for taking "moral" stands while we export our problems. In a similar vein, we can use the import route as for example in taking electricity from the UK - which may or may not be produced via nuclear power.

It is at least something at least that the Green Party leader gives even selective credence to scientific evidence even though he has decided the issue in davance!

On Friday, his government's Chief Scientific Adviser highlighted the sharp divergence between the scientific evidence and public perceptions of GM foods. However, as with incineration, Gormley is at his best also following the anti-GM crowd.

"Minister Gormley said he was open to hearing from everybody in this debate on whether landfill levies should be increased and whether an incineration levy should also be introduced," a press release noted.

Later in September John Gormley will address a UN meeting on climate change in New York. He should use the opportunity to thank other ministers for their countries support in burning Irish hazardous waste!

When Gormley cannot provide a coherent policy for this country, God help the rest of the world!

Forest countries seek carbon credits; Indonesia's Rain Forest Peatlands

OECD report calls for end to biofuel subsidies; Food price surges and damage to the environment consequence of current policies

Rising global greenhouse gas emissions will cost more than $200bn a year to return to today’s level of emissions by 2030

About 50% of the increased demand for energy services in the 26 International Energy Agency member countries was met through increased energy use, and the other half through improvements in efficiency in the period 1990-2004

Report launched on Key Meteorological Indicators of Climate Change in Ireland

Gormley Opposes Incinerators in Ireland but Supports Export of Irish Hazardous Waste for Incineration

Extreme weather the norm across globe; Temperatures highest since 1800

Freeloaders to reduce Air Travel in interests of Planet! Like hell they will!

2007-09-08T03:24:00.000+01:00

Dipak Patel, former Zambian Minister of Commerce, Trade & Industry - - The Irish brought 21 civil servants to Hong Kong - more than five times Patel's trade division staff total and the Irish had little of substance to do. Some of the 40-person Irish delegation, were there to "represent" the poor of the developing world.

In December 2005, 30 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) flew to Hong Kong to "monitor" progress in the Doha trade talks, where they demanded almost daily updates from Peter Mandelson, EU Trade Commissioner, despite the fact that as parliamentarians they had no role in the negotiations. The total of trips by official parliamentary delegations in 2005 was 43.

It's easy to be generous to yourself, with business class travel and top-notch hotels, when someone else is paying.

Three Irish Ministers brought an entourage of 21 civil servants to the same meeting.

The 24 Irish officials were joined by 16 other Irish freeloaders from lobby groups such as IFA (farmers) and IBEC (business) and representatives from groups working for the world's poor.

Conor Lenihan, then (Junior) Minister for Overseas Development, was there also to "defend" the interests of the poor of the world while the Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan was there to ensure that Mandelson would not concede anything to developing countries that would damage the interests of Irish farmers.

It must have been some donnybrook with Ireland one of the149 member countries of the World Trade Organization with delegations there and we had 40 from a country of 4 million people.

A French chef who worked at the Saudi State Guest House in Jeddah in the early 1990's, told me that Pakistan' then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had brought 85 freeloaders on a trip to Saudi Arabia with her.

However, not everyone can play that game.

Dipak Patel, Zambian Minister of Commerce, Trade & Industry in 2005, who was the Chair-Co-ordinator for the Least Developed Countries WTO negotiations Jan-Dec 2005 has said: "...the Financial Times has a bigger trade team than our entire trade division."

The FT's Alan Beattie, in an article titled: Dipak and the Goliaths (unrestricted), wrote in December 2005: It is late at night in a bar by the Zambezi river when Dipak Patel, trade minister from the impoverished southern African state of Zambia, finds the perfect way to illustrate how hard his job is. “So how many people does the Financial Times have covering trade?” he says. Well, I say, there’s me (the world trade editor), a reporter in Geneva who spends most of her time on trade, someone in Brussels, someone in Washington, and of course our bureau chiefs and reporters around the world spend a fair amount of their time writing about it. “God,” Patel says, contemplating the rows of luxury cognac bottles behind the bar, waiting for the rich tourists. “The FT has more capacity to do trade policy than we do.”

When asked on RTE's Morning Ireland what all the Irish were doing in HK - the reality of course was sfa - Conor Lenihan provided an example of his endeavours for Ireland (besides the poor of the world of course). He had ran into a man from China who had expressed a desire to invest in Ireland!

Three Irish officials at most would have sufficed for the trip to HK and the staff at the Consulate could have been on hand to roll out the red carpet.

So in an age of concern about climate change, don't be foolish and expect anything to change even with the appendage of the Green Party at the Cabinet table.

A press release issued last month by the Department of Environment stated: Minister Gormley, at the request of the Taoiseach, will be travelling to the UN in New York next month to represent Ireland and address a heads of State meeting which will be discussing climate change.

There will also be heads of government at the meeting, we assume!

How many bag carriers will Ahern and Gormley bring to New York?

In true Hollywood style, the Government will buy compensatory carbon credits - a salve-conscience routine that is the modern equivalent of the poor box.

So most of the 185 heads of government or State will drone on about climate change in an almost empty chamber, but the serious work will be at the UN climate change conference in Bali in December, which aims to lay the groundwork for a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol on curbing emissions.

Progress in Bali will not be helped by hordes of the usual freeloaders/hangers-on scrambling to get to the island.

Meanwhile, on Friday, the Irish Independent carried a report on a super-junket by Irish local politicians.

Years ago, to reduce the opportunities for corruption, councillors were left with one real power - land rezoning!

Besides their involvement in creating an artificial scarcity of land for development, in a country that is 4.0% urbanised, Irish councillors are also well known for their overseas 'fact-finding' missions.

A few decades ago, a local government conference in Brighton in Southern England had 150 attendees and about 120 were Irish.

The Independent reported that a group of 25 county councillors are on a 'secret mission' to investigate landslide fencing in Austria.

The Mayo councillors flew out Thursday from Dublin Airport for a four-day trip which is shrouded in mystery.

Mayo county secretary John Condon refused to reveal how many councillors were on the trip or what its purpose was.

"I don't have time because I have more important business to attend to. Next week you'll get all the information you need," he said, before hanging up.

However, the Irish Independent said that the purpose of the trip is to visit a factory in Austria which supplied the council with €900,000 of landslide barriers.

They are also scheduled to visit Salzburg, the historic town where the 'Sound of Music' was filmed.

The 'fact-finding' mission to Austria has accounted for 25 of the county's 32 councillors, as well as local authority officials and local newspaper reporters.

Some of the councillors are also believed to have been on a delegation sent by Mayo County Council to Argentina last March.

They attended ceremonies to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the death of Admiral William Browne, the Mayo-born founder of the Argentinean Navy.

The newspaper reported that it is understood that Mayo County Council organises a 'fact-finding' mission to Europe every year, with recent trips including a walking tour in England.

So expect lots of actionless action on climate change issues ahead but don't expect freeloaders in Ireland or elsewhere to imperil the global aviation and hotel industry.

The Irish Media and Economics

2007-09-01T16:55:00.000+01:00

Professor Michael Buckley

My attention was recently grabbed by the news that Michael Buckley former Chief Executive of AIB Bank, has been appointed as adjunct (an associate or assistant of another - one of the definitions in Merriam-Webster) Professor of Economics at University College Cork.

I had 35 lecturers during my six years at UCC and only two were not cures for insomnia. Bryan McMahon, son of renowned Listowel writer Bryan McMahon was one of them as then lecturer in European law and the other was a non-academic, Richard Haslam who was then Limerick County Manager. As a lecturer in the subsidiary subject of Public Administration, Haslam had the ability make subjects like the Public Health Act of 1878 interesting. As for the rest, one of them, a lecturer in economics, who had a style not that different from my father when he stumbled on something interesting in The Cork Examiner and began reading aloud, told me on one occasion that he had given up on economics years before. His speciality was microeconomics - exciting stuff of course like the elasticity of demand curves.

I saw Buckley once on television being interviewed on BBC's Newsnight by Jeremy Paxman after news of the Rusnak currency fraud scam broke. Resembling in appearance, the late brilliant Scottish actor Alastair Sim, Buckley is no Cicero but it would be some change if a former Irish bank CE provided an honest appraisal of Irish public policy issues rather than the default role as well-fed yesmen on company boards. Buckley started his career as a civil servant becoming Chef de Cabinet to the President of the European Court of Auditors, Luxembourg between the years of 1977 and 1981 and subsequently was a senior official in charge of public expenditure at the Department of Finance.

Economists have become more ubiquitous since I graduated and in the private sector most positions are in financial services. Basically that role is a hybrid of public relations and economics. If you cannot glean a silver lining from the darkest cloud, your career prospects would be pretty limited. The long term horizon for such economists is two to three years at most.

"Although the media are doing their best to put the fear of God into consumers by talking about a huge slump in the economy over the next couple of years, the underlying fundamentals continue to suggest that, outside the housing sector, things are still going well," said Bloxham Stockbrokers Chief Economist Alan McQuaid according to the Irish Independent.

Yes indeed! Haven't we heard of "fundamentals" for six months from the time the subprime crisis broke last February? The line from the vast majority of financial industry spokespeople was that there would be no contagion from a relatively small segment of the US mortgage industry. Now undaunted by having been proved so wrong and with their bonuses on the line together with their company stockholdings at risk, the clarion call is for the Fed to cut rates steeply again - which had some unintended consequences the last time the course of action was taken in 2000 and 2001.

The main Irish media organisations have economists who generally provide a balanced presentation on economic events. There are of course scary headlines at times but what should be expected in a democracy when the countervailing force is often self-interested spin from politicians and industry folk with an eye on their wallets.

The principal problem is that economics is a niche area and journalists without a knowledge or interest in the area, are manna for the spin of politicians and others.

The stamp duty debate, which began a year ago this month when the new leader of the Progressive Democrats Michael McDowell proposed its abolition or reform in respect of house purchases, as a measure to alleviate pressure on the "coping classes," is a great example of how the media fell for the spin.

The Sunday Independent had most of its columnists write about the pernicious system over several weeks. What was so bizarre about the debate was that the related issue of the VAT tax of 13.5% on the cost of new houses (there is no VAT applied in the UK) was ignored as was the corrupt land development system that makes multimillionaires of farmers near Irish towns.

Is the resultant cost for house buyers a direct tax and the inflated cost of roadbuilding because of a sweetheart deal with farmers, an indirect tax?

Michael McDowell later presented another wheeze on RTE Radio 1's Morning Ireland programme. The old age pension would be raised to €300 per week during the lifetime of the following government.

He spoke of course about pensioner poverty but wasn't asked about the causes of such poverty - the fact that almost a half of the workforce have no occupational pensions compared with the gold-plated ones for his then profession should have been raised.

As most journalists are economically challenged or have limited interest in the area, spin still wins out despite the pleas of the spinners about negativity in the media.

A postscript to the stamp duty debate is that economist Marc Coleman who promoted stamp duty reform in his last months as Economics Editor at The Irish Times, has moved to The Sunday Independent.

He is unlikely to have the same freedom in his new perch at The Sunday Independent and last Sunday offered some crumbs of hope to the spinners in an interview on a forthcoming book: "As I said I'm an optimist and although I have no problem talking sense into the economy, I never talk the economy down like some others do. Last week ECB President, Jean Claude Trichet, intervened to steady nerves just as financial markets were losing their grip. In my own small way, I think of myself as doing the same for the Irish economy. Commentators have to remember that someone else's job may sometimes depend on what they say."

I wish these people had the cojones to name the baddies who "talk the economy down."

Irish Property Obsession, British Landlordism and Myths

2007-08-28T14:50:00.000+01:00

An image from a contemporary publication of the lynching and burning of a black man by an Irish mob in New York City in July 1863, during the Civil War Draft Riots. © Collection of the New-York Historical Society

Every country has its myths, which may partly reflect reality but more often than not are used to avoid what Al Gore might call an "inconvenient truth."

For example, the Irish obsession with property is often attributed to our historical experience of British landlordism.

The experience of many people with the grubby rental market with its leases of a maximum of a year, has more likely much more to do with it. Besides, we Irish have no aversion to being landlords.

When Irish farmers who get up to 80% of their income from public funds, make multi-million euro killings from the corrupt land rezoning system, which creates an artificial scarcity of land for development, they're very happy to become landlords of residential and commercial property. The latter is particularly popular as business tenants across the globe are less hassle prone than Joe Soaps.

Landlordism was part of a pernicious economic system as was slavery.

Landlordism has been an important part of our narrative of victimhood and we like other peoples have the same proclivity to airbrush out inconvenient truths.

When the Civil War broke out in the US, the Irish landlord system was still reeling from the impact of the Potato Famine of the 1840's. In New York, the Irish had become a force in the pro-slavery Democratic Party and strongly opposed the end of slavery because of the perceived economic threat from an influx of freed slaves.

In January 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation became law.

In his 1991 book, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863, Leslie M. Harris wrote that: In March 1863, fuel was added to the fire in the form of a stricter federal draft law. All male citizens between twenty and thirty-five and all unmarried men between thirty-five and forty-five years of age were subject to military duty. The federal government entered all eligible men into a lottery. Those who could afford to hire a substitute or pay the government three hundred dollars might avoid enlistment. Blacks, who were not considered citizens, were exempt from the draft.

In the month preceding the July 1863 lottery, in a pattern similar to the 1834 anti-abolition riots, antiwar newspaper editors published inflammatory attacks on the draft law aimed at inciting the white working class. They criticized the federal government's intrusion into local affairs on behalf of the "nigger war." Democratic Party leaders raised the specter of a New York deluged with southern blacks in the aftermath of the Emancipation Proclamation. White workers compared their value unfavorably to that of southern slaves, stating that "[we] are sold for $300 [the price of exemption from war service] whilst they pay $1000 for negroes." In the midst of war-time economic distress, they believed that their political leverage and economic status was rapidly declining as blacks appeared to be gaining power. On Saturday, July 11, 1863, the first lottery of the conscription law was held. For twenty-four hours the city remained quiet.

On Monday, July 13, 1863, between 6 and 7 A.M., the five days of mayhem and bloodshed that would be known as the Civil War Draft Riots began.

The rioters' targets initially included only military and governmental buildings, symbols of the unfairness of the draft. Mobs attacked only those individuals who interfered with their actions. But by afternoon of the first day, some of the rioters had turned to attacks on black people, and on things symbolic of black political, economic, and social power. Rioters attacked a black fruit vendor and a nine-year-old boy at the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street before moving to the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue between Forty-Third and Forty-Fourth Streets. By the spring of 1863, the managers had built a home large enough to house over two hundred children. Financially stable and well-stocked with food, clothing, and other provisions, the four-story orphanage at its location on Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second Street was an imposing symbol of white charity toward blacks and black upward mobility.

At 4 P.M. on July 13, "the children numbering 233, were quietly seated in their school rooms, playing in the nursery, or reclining on a sick bed in the Hospital when an infuriated mob, consisting of several thousand men, women and children, armed with clubs, brick bats etc. advanced upon the Institution." The crowd took as much of the bedding, clothing, food, and other transportable articles as they could and set fire to the building. John Decker, chief engineer of the fire department, was on hand, but firefighters were unable to save the building. The destruction took twenty minutes.

Throughout the week of riots, mobs harassed and sometimes killed blacks and their supporters and destroyed their property. Rioters burned the home of Abby Hopper Gibbons, prison reformer and daughter of abolitionist Isaac Hopper. They also attacked white "amalgamationists," such as Ann Derrickson and Ann Martin, two women who were married to black men; and Mary Burke, a white prostitute who catered to black men. Near the docks, tensions that had been brewing since the mid-1850s between white longshoremen and black workers boiled over. As recently as March of 1863, white employers had hired blacks as longshoremen, with whom Irish men refused to work.

An Irish mob then attacked two hundred blacks who were working on the docks, while other rioters went into the streets in search of "all the negro porters, cartmen and laborers . . . they could find." They were routed by the police. But in July 1863, white longshoremen took advantage of the chaos of the Draft Riots to attempt to remove all evidence of a black and interracial social life from area near the docks. White dockworkers attacked and destroyed brothels, dance halls, boarding houses, and tenements that catered to blacks; mobs stripped the clothing off the white owners of these businesses.

Landlordism is not an explanation for our obsession with property today. Selective history and victimhood only perpetuates delusion.

We should be mature enough to accept both the positive and negative.

In the US almost a century after the rioting of 1963, an Irish-American dominated American politics like no other had done before him.

His name was Joseph Raymond McCarthy and he has also been airbrushed from our Pantheon of Heroes.

Gormley Opposes Incinerators in Ireland but Supports Export of Irish Hazardous Waste for Incineration

2007-08-26T09:03:00.000+01:00

IRISH HAZARDOUS WASTE EXPORT DESTINATIONS 2004 - - John Gormley, TD, Green Party leader and Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government opposes waste incineration in Ireland, which may be politically popular but he has provided no clarity on how we can credibly reduce our dependence on landfill.

It is also rank hypocrisy to oppose incineration while 70% of Irish hazardous waste is exported for incineration!

The politics of opportunism generally pays more dividends than the politics of principle and Pat Rabbitte who resigned as leader of the Irish Labour Party last Thursday, is testimony to that.

In an editorial on Friday, The Irish Times said: Mr Rabbitte stood out as one of a rare breed today: he was a principled politician. Right or wrong, he lived a political life of conviction. He firmly believed that a real alternative to a Fianna Fáil-led coalition should be offered to the voters in the 2007 General Election, stood by his principles when he could have done a volte face and, in the end, accepted the decision of the people with his resignation yesterday.

John Gormley, TD, Green Party leader and Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, who couldn't countenance another five years in Opposition, is more at home with the politics of opportunism and the Irish system of mouthing principle on issues while being happy to have solutions provided overseas, thereby avoiding difficult choices, is nothing new.

Gormley, in an address to the CoolEarth Fair at the Festival of World Cultures in Dún Laoghaire today, will speak on the themes of "Climate Change, Energy, and Nature", and address the issue of the Government's waste policy and incineration, as well as climate change.

In highlighting Government policy on waste management a press release says that the Minister will say "that incineration is no longer the cornerstone of our waste management policy. This Government has a different approach to waste management. We believe the waste hierarchy is paramount. Real emphasis has to be placed on reduction, reuse, and recycling first. Let us be clear: we do not see incineration or thermal treatment as a form of recovery, it is a form of disposal."

"This government has also set out clearly in its programme a more sustainable approach to the financing of waste projects. So-called "put or pay" clauses, which guarantee a waste stream to incinerator firms are now out of the equation, as are waste permits (waster permits can be used to direct waste to certain types of facilities) which perform a similar unsustainable function," Gormley planned to say.

"This new approach will undoubtedly have an impact on planning. In the past we have seen An Bord Pleanála overruling the recommendations of its own inspectors on the basis that incineration was government policy. This is no longer the case. Good planning and the waste hierarchy must take precedence."

The "waste hierarchy is paramount," because Gormley wants to kill off the plan to build an incinerator in his Dublin South-East constituency. His approach is to ensure that no incineration project would be viable at planning stage by preventing councils from committing to supplying a given amount of waste. Gormley's predecessor in office Dick Roche TD, supported the use of incineration but said that he would not have agreed to locating a plant in his own constituency.

Repak in a report on waste in Ireland in 2004, said that the total projected quantity of hazardous waste was 723,921 tonnes. This compares to a projected estimate of 533,592 tonnes in 2001 and represents an increase of 36%. The increase is dominated by the reported generation of contaminated soil.

Hazardous waste includes solvents, lead-acid batteries, asbestos waste and other categories and in 2004, Ireland exported 70% of its hazardous waste. Some 30% of our municipal waste is exported.

Ireland is largely reliant on landfill, which is viewed by the European Commission as a serious threat to water supply as well as in relation to the production of methane.

The European Commission decided last March to start legal action against 14 Member States for inadequately transposing the EU's legislation on the landfilling of waste into their national law. It sent first warning letters to seven Member States last December, and is now doing the same for Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

The Commission's action follows a comprehensive evaluation of the degree of compliance with the landfill directive by all the pre-Jan 1, 2007 EU-25 Member States. The directive governs operation of landfill sites and is a key measure to protect human health and the environment against potential hazards from waste.

Stavros Dimas, European Commissioner for Environment, said: "The Commission's checks have revealed many shortcomings in compliance with the rules on waste landfills in virtually every Member State. The result is that human health and the environment are not being protected as well as they need to be against dangers from the dumping of waste. Eight years after the landfill directive was adopted it is high time for all Member States to rectify this situation without further delay."

The EU Landfill Directive requires reductions in the amount of biodegradable municipal waste being land-filled. This effectively requires the replacement of landfill capacity with infrastructure of a different kind. Many of Ireland’s competitors have already put in place such infrastructure and will have a competitive edge in this regard until such time as the waste treatment capacity required in Ireland is delivered.

A report published in June 2006 by Forfás, the Irish Government's policy advisory agency, says that Ireland has made significant progress in the area of municipal waste management in recent years, with the share being recycled increasing from 13 percent in 2001 to 33 percent in 2004. However, Ireland performs relatively poorly with a recovery rate of 35 percent for industrial waste, highlighting Ireland’s dependence on landfill as a waste management solution. A significant amount of industrial waste is now land-filled on-site by the bigger companies rather than being land-filled in municipal landfills.

-Waste Costs: Of the countries benchmarked, Ireland has the highest waste management costs for non-hazardous landfill and biological waste treatment. Recycling costs and hazardous waste treatment costs are also higher than most competitor countries because of Ireland’s reliance on export markets for the treatment of recyclable materials. The vast majority of Ireland’s recyclable materials are exported for further treatment. Additional transport costs are directly impacting on the waste costs for the enterprise sector.

Infrastructure Deficits

Ireland’s dependence on landfill remains high relative to other countries. This is mainly due to the limited progress that has been made in delivering waste infrastructure in preferred waste treatment options such as thermal treatment and biological treatment. Ireland’s comparatively poor performance on key indicators such as costs and capacity can be traced back to the failure to deliver key waste management infrastructure in recent years. Ireland’s infrastructure deficits are also likely to affect Ireland’s ability to meet the targets set down in the EU Landfill Directive. Ireland will be restricted to landfilling 75 percent of the municipal biodegradable waste produced (by weight) in 1995 by 2010. This means Ireland must reduce its 2004 biodegradable waste levels by almost 340,000 tonnes.

It's easy for Gormley to peddle in the politics of opportunism on an August Sunday with his fatuously termed waste hierarchy.

Have the cojones to oppose incineration directly and then address the landfill and recycling issue.

In Opposition, it's cost free to promote contradictory policies. Oppose nuclear power while not opposing buying power from the UK or being against incineration while exporting most of our hazardous waste for incineration overseas.

What is being offered to the attendees at the CoolEarth Fair and the Nimbies in Dublin South-East is the standard cute hoorism of Irish politics and it doesn't even come in new packaging.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!

Three Top Irish Tech Firms Report Losses but which Firms Export More than €12 billion each year?

2007-08-23T10:51:00.000+01:00

The Provost of Trinity College Dublin, Dr John Hegarty (left) presents Chris Horn of IONA Technologies with the TCD Innovation Award in September 2006. IONA Technologies was founded in the IDA-backed TCD Innovation Centre, by three former TCD lecturers from the Department of Computer Science.

Three publicly traded Irish tech companies have recently reported losses at a time of strong global economic growth.

The official target to achieve the status of a world-class knowledge economy is 2013.

Last month, IONA reported a net loss of $1.2 million in its second quarter; Trintech reported on Wednesday, Aug 22, a net loss for the second quarter of $1.0 million and today, Datalex reported a net loss of $0.9 million in H1 2007 compared with a profit of $1.6m in 2006.

Also today, under a headline: Irish tech firms take on Asia-Pacific - the Irish Examiner reports that Irish IT firms (not clear what proportion relates to Irish-owned firms as distinct from units of multinational firms, based in Ireland. Enterprise Ireland does not have a breakdown of exorts to Asia-Pacific by type of firm) already do business worth €185 million with Australia’s software industry. Australia has a highly- developed financial services sector and Enterprise Ireland is targeting it as a key gateway to the Asian-Pacific markets.

Several Irish firms are taking part in a series of networking events in Australia, beginning with a showcase seminar in Sydney today.

The Examiner says: Ireland is now in the world’s top three producers and exporters of software and 800 firms generate more than €12 billion in export revenue for the economy.

Impressive stuff to many readers I would suspect but it is more than misleading as 90- 95% of the quoted figure relates to exports made by foreign-owned firms based in Ireland.

I ask again, how can Irish-owned firms be helped by claiming the likes of Microsoft as an Irish tech firm?

RELATED

Irish Trade Statistics: Policymakers opt for Spin and Delusion rather than confront challenging facts

Irish Whiskey - A Lost Opportunity to Create Global Brands of Economic Significance for Ireland

2007-08-21T15:37:00.000+01:00

John Jameson Distillery was founded by Scotsman John Jameson who had married into the Haig family, distillers of Scotch whisky. His son married into the Stein family, one of the biggest whisky distillers in Scotland and owners of the distillery at Bow Street, Dublin. John Jameson acquired the Bow Street distillery in the year 1780.

In years past, Irish businessman Tony O'Reilly often spoke of the value of establishing global brands and like the late Victor Kiam with his razor, O'Reilly first bought into one of his examples, Waterford Crystal, which by 1990 had linked up with English tableware brand Wedgwood, to form Waterford Wedgwood plc.

Irish whiskey like Waterford Crystal, were strong brands in the 19th century. By the time of Prohibition in the US, Irish and Scotch distillers shared the foreign whiskey market.

Many Irish distillers went out of business and in my home town of Bandon, the Allman distillery that had opened in 1825 and at times employed about 400 people, closed soon after the ending of Prohibition in 1933.

Irish Governments ignored the potential of creating significant markets overseas and no serious effort was made to rationalise the industry.

Scotch distillers responded swiftly to the re-opening of the American market, partly with the assistance of the development of continuous distillation in Scotland, as their new blended whisky could easily meet the increased demand and the Scottish whisky industry boomed.

I have argued recently that the Irish economy is more dependent today on foreign-owned firms than it was at the begining of the Celtic Tiger period and as international commercial property is the investment of choice for Irish with money, there is little hope that a significant Irish-owned sector can establish itself in international markets.

There is also evidence of what can happen when an immature business is acquired by an overseas concern.

Given that 40,000 jobs are maintained in Scotland by their whisky industry compared with about 1,000 in Ireland by the whiskey* sector, including Bailey's Irish Cream, it seems to me that we lost the opportunity a few decades ago to create a global brand of economic significance.

Irish Distillers, a unit of French company Pernod Ricard, says that Jameson, the world’s leading Irish whiskey brand has now reached sales of two million cases for the first time. (2006) Over the last decade, sales of Jameson have doubled. In the past year alone, figures in the United States, Jameson’s largest market, show an increase in excess of 20% with other countries such as South Africa, Russia and Brazil achieving exceptional growth rates.

Another mark of its international success is that for the first time, Jameson has made it into the top fifty selling spirit brands worldwide and is now ranked with the international elite. Jameson is the fastest growing international whiskey brand in the world and one of the fastest growing spirits brands.

However, Irish whiskey is not a big business.

Irish Distillers currently employs about 530 employees across 4 locations on the island of Ireland.

On the island, the Old Bushmills Distillery in County Antrim, which is owned by Guinness owner Diageo and has a payroll of about 125, is the other main distillery.

Last week, independent distillery Cooley Distillery, which is chaired by former UCD academic Dr. John Teeling, said the rise in pre-tax profits, from €1.3 million to €1.67m, reflects growing demand by younger drinkers for Irish whiskey worldwide. Turnover was ahead by 27% to €11.7m.

The company said it needed improved distribution that is dominated by a small number of big companies.

Ireland produces about five million cases of whiskey a year and six million cases of Baileys Cream Liqueur at the Diageo-owned Gilbeys.

1 billion bottles of Scotch were exported in 2006 according to the Scottish Whisky Association

Rampant Scotch

The renaissance of the Scotch whisky industry was confirmed last month when Bacardi, the Bermuda-based distiller, announced plans to invest more than £120m in Scotland to expand production of its Dewar’s brand.

The Financial Times reported that the industry has gone from strength to strength over the past year as international distillers seek to capitalise on rising demand from emerging markets in Asia and Latin America.

Last year was a record year for Scotch whisky exports, with sales revenues rising 4 per cent to almost £2.5bn. There was strong growth in premium bottled malt whisky exports, which increased by 7 per cent to £408m. The Scotch Whisky Association said: "You haven't seen this sort of investment for 30 years."

With sales to markets including Singapore, China and Venezuela growing fast, distillers are pouring money into whisky operations.

Bacardi will spend some $250m (£123m) over the next decade to expand its warehousing, blending, packaging and bottling operations. This includes building 18 warehouses and buying 100 acres of land in central Scotland.

Joaquin Bacardi, Bacardi senior global brand director, said it was responding to demand from emerging markets where economic growth was “generating a strong middle-class consumer with disposable income”.

Diageo, owner of the Johnnie Walker whisky brand, said in February it would invest £100m to build a new malt distillery in Scotland.

In July, Paul Walsh, chief executive, said Diageo planned to expand further into premium brands such as the Blue Label King George V edition of its Johnnie Walker whisky, which sells for $500. "You have polarisation of incomes . . . those who have good incomes want the best."

Chivas Brothers, the whisky and gin business owned by Irish Distillers owner, Pernod Ricard, and which includes the Glenlivet and Ballantine’s brands, has invested millions of pounds in Scotland this year to expand bottling operations.

The FT said that whisky accounts for 13 per cent of Scottish exports, excluding oil and gas, and services 200 export markets. It makes up about a quarter of the UK’s annual food and drink exports.

More than 40,000 Scottish jobs depend on whisky production, including cereal suppliers, bottling, labelling and packaging companies and transport suppliers.

Although the bulk of jobs are at large plants in central Scotland, the industry also provides steady – if low-paid – jobs in the Highlands and Islands, where employment opportunities are limited. Distilleries account for 25 per cent of Scotland’s five-starred tourist attractions, attracting 1m visitors a year

Bacardi, which has five distilleries in Scotland and employs 300 people, expects to add about 100 new jobs as it expands production.

Irishman Richard Burrows, chairman of the Scotch Whisky Association, said the industry’s prospects were brighter than they had been for many years. “I’m greatly encouraged that distillers, large and small, are investing in facilities in Scotland and taking advantage of opportunities worldwide, with markets in Asia, North and South America offering strong potential for growth.”

Richard Burrows who is also the Governor of the Bank of Ireland represents Pernod Ricard on the Scotch Whisky Association.

Irish Whiskey since the 1960's

In the early 1960s the export of Irish whiskey was insignificant and in 1966 three of the remaining distilleries merged in a new company called the United Distillers of Ireland (UDI). The name was subsequently changed to Irish Distillers (IDL). The three distilleries were John Powers & Sons, John Jameson & Sons and Cork Distilleries (Jameson - founded in Dublin in 1780; Powers - established in Dublin in 1791; and Cork Distilleries which dates from 1825). In 1972, the Old Bushmills Distillery, Co. Antrim becomes part of Irish Distillers.

In 1975, IDL centralized all its production at a new £9 million distillery, Midleton, in East Cork. The new Midleton distillery was built behind the old Midleton Distillery.Within a few years, Canadian company Seagram’s bought both IDL and Irish whisky industry now held only one percent of the global whisky market.In 1988, French company Pernod Richard bought IDL from Seagram’s.

Given the challenge that we have in developing scalable high-tech companies of world class, the near death of the Irish whiskey industry until the 1960's and then as appendages to Canadian and French companies, appears to have been a huge opportunity foregone.

Today, it's effectively too late to pull the fat from the fire.

We've had some success in tapping into the US market but with Scotch making big advances in emerging markets in Asia, the battle has already been lost

The $970 billion global market for alcoholic beverages is experiencing a period of unprecedented change. While about 60 percent of the market is still in the hands of small, local enterprises, truly global players are steadily emerging according to an Accenture report.

*The word for the Irish product has an 'e' - whiskey.

Aer Lingus' Dermot Mannion should tell the likes of Willie O'Dea where to get off

2007-08-15T10:15:00.000+01:00

Aer Lingus Chief Executive Dermot Mannion

These are testing times for Aer Lingus Chief Executive Dermot Mannion and in the interest of the airline, he should hold the line against bishops, opportunistic local politicians in the Mid-West Region, the demands of business folk who take tough decisions like him every day, Ryanair's chance to make some hay from the Shannon debacle and the top earner pilots/shareholders who dislike the model that has turned Ireland from an economic backwater into an advanced economy.

We have an advanced economy but our governance system has a 1920's vintage where there is little accountability and passing the buck is the rule rather than the exception.

Limerick politician Willie O'Dea has a non-job in the Cabinet as Minister for Defence but nevertheless, he supported the privatisation of Aer Lingus in 2006. Like most Irish politicians, he is par excellance, the local messenger boy/fixer who in the Irish system, do the work that a citizens' bureau system handles elsewhere.

Long-term policy issues are generally of secondary importance to most Irish politicians.

Junior minister in adjacent constituency of Clare, Tony Killeen, is another local messenger boy who earlier this year disclosed that his constituency office mails more than 14,000 letters annually. Killeen was interviewed on RTE Radio 1's Morning Ireland programme today and he said that he did not understand the implications of the request of Ryanair, a 25.1% shareholder in Aer Lingus, for an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) to be held on the planned cancellation of the Shannon-London Heathrow route.

There are seldom cost-free choices despite the wishes of politicians.

Peace in Ireland after an age of strife is quite marvel to behold.

The Irish Government has given support to the Northern Ireland Executive in its campaign to get the British government to lower the UK corporation tax for NI to the Republic's level of 12.5%. If there was an all-Ireland tax of 12.5%, isn't it conceivable that we would have aggro about projects lost to Northern Ireland?

The decision of Aer Lingus to open a base in Belfast would have been inconceivable a few years ago.

It is also a decision that is part of a peace dividend for the whole island but the likes of Willie O'Dea wish to have their cake and eat it.

O'Dea has compared Mannion to seventeenth century English leader Oliver Cromwell, the most hated Englishman in the history of Ireland. Abuse is easier than explaining where are the existing plans for an airport that is already depending on the temporary business from the transit of US troops for the Iraq War and is subject to loss of business from the EU/US Open Skies agreement?

As for the implications of his vote on privatisation, O'Dea does not have to explain anything.

The Cabinet members are on holidays this month of August but with the Houses of the Oireacthas only in session for about 90 days each year, the trick is to just ignore the media.

Irish politicians simply are seldom subjected to detailed questioning unless its via a public tribunal.

So with the spineless local politicians jumping on the Shannon bandwagon and the trade unions energised by the calamity howling from the West, what credible future can Aer Lingus have unless it stands firm?

The job description of the Irish TD in the Twenty-first Century

A Banjaxed System of Public Governance where the Buck Stops Nowhere

Reform Irish Style: Take action only in Response to a CRISIS...sorry...a DIRE CRISIS

IBEC calls planned strike by Aer Lingus pilots/shareholders cynical attempt by change-resistant union representing the most highly paid group in the airline

Ryanair announces additional routes from Shannon to London region if Aer Lingus does not back down on Heathrow; Requests Aer Lingus to call EGM

Aer Lingus pilots/shareholders want Republic of Ireland pay and conditions to apply at international bases

What do citizens want from the European Union?

2007-08-13T11:37:00.000+01:00

The 50th anniversary logo of the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, in the Irish language.

Many citizens are confused and bewildered by the complex organisational structure and numerous competencies of the European Union. Conversely, it is not easy for decision-makers in the EU to know what its citizens expect of them. The rejection of the European Constitution by voters in France and the Netherlands clearly shows that many citizens have trouble identifying with the European Union.

But what do its citizens expect of the European Union?

Floriana Cerniglia and Laura Pagani, University of Milan Bicocca, in their recent CESifo Working Paper, examine Eurobarometer survey results to ascertain how citizens envision the division of responsibilities within the EU and between the member states in the EU-15. They show that there are policy areas that citizens agree to be important throughout the EU. For the majority of surveyed citizens internal security, justice, education, culture, the health system and other areas of the welfare state should be assigned to the national level.

At the European level belong decisions relating to currency issues, foreign policy, development assistance and dealing with the threat of terrorism. In other areas the opinions of Europeans diverge as to where competence lies. These include agriculture, immigration and defence policies.

Some countries have a stronger pro-European stance and others are more euro-sceptical regardless of the policy area. The strongest proponents of the European Union are in southern Europe, especially in Italy, and the northern countries are the least enthusiastic. The Anglo-Saxon countries, Germany and France occupy the middle territory.

The study also determined that citizens that think well of their countries' institutions are opposed to a strong shift of responsibilities to the European level; the opposite is the case in countries whose citizens tend to be discontent with their national governments. The results are also influenced by social criteria: more educated or wealthier citizens have a stronger pro-European attitude.

Also, adherents of leftward-leaning political positions tend to favour a stronger role for the European Union.

The complete CESifo Working Paper No. 2067 The European Union and the Member States: Which level of government should do what? An empirical analysis of Europeans' preferences can be downloaded here.

The CESifo Group, consisting of the Center for Economic Studies (CES), the Ifo Institute for Economic Research and the CESifo GmbH (Munich Society for the Promotion of Economic Research), is based in Munich Germany and is a research group unique in Europe in the area of economic research. It combines the theoretically oriented economic research of the university with the empirical work of a leading Economic research institute and places this combination in an international environment.