Republic
POTD -Directions
By chance I had a long standing appointment in Dublin yesterday so experienced at first hand the chaos on the streets of Dublin with the visit of O’Bama. Roads closed and diversions in place meant that a 20 minute walk took me 40 minutes. As O’Bama arrived in the early afternoon, I happened to be [...] more »
Who can replace Garret?
In his homily at Garret FitzGerald’s splendid funeral yesterday , Garret’s oldest friend the theologian Fr Enda McDonagh took up a theme Garret himself had written about just over a month ago . Fr McDonagh said the fabric of Irish society had been undermined in recent years as activities in the church, politics, banking and [...] more »
Queen’s Visit: Time to move on but not to forget…
‘I have signed my own death warrant’; so (allegedly) did Michael Collins spake after he had signed The Treaty in London in 1921. Collins’s support for the Anglo-Irish Treaty which both agreed to the partition of the country and required elected representatives in the new state to promise to be faithful to His Majesty King [...] more »
Garret FitzGerald
How sadly ironic that Garret FitzGerald should die at the moment when his main mission in politics has literally been crowned with fulfillment. In Towards a New Ireland and throughout his career he championed his big idea, uncomfortable to unreflective nationalists, that unionists were as Irish as they were and had to be understood in their own [...] more »
The Queen’s visit means politics is catching up with the people’s interests
The dissident republican threat may be a factor in producing a confusing response to the Queen’s visit from Gerry Adams. In the Examiner he ‘d seemed to cast aside SinnFein’s former reservations to welcoming it grumpily, seeing it as an opportunity for “much fuller discussion” about the British-Irish relationship. This would allow him to write its significance [...] more »
Irish bailout fate mixed up in the bigger chaos, with no solution in sight
Ireland Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan has been goaded into a reply by the scathing attack on the Irish bailout terms from Morgan Kelly ak.a. Dr Doom. Not much of substance in his RTE interview far; but presumably he knows something we don’t. We are keeping our options open,” Honohan said. “We have a number [...] more »
Don’t stab at Irish political reform
Irish political reform is in danger of getting off on the wrong foot. There may be a referendum next year for abolishing the Seanad and all party talks are proceeding to reduce the number of Dail committees, so that the surviving ones can assume a stronger scrutiny role. There may be much merit in both [...] more »
Garret fails to account for era of political corruption
In part 2 of his musings on civic morality in the Republic, Garret FitzGerald tackles the question of why the lack of it only became fatal in recent decades in a most tortuous and evasive piece of prose. The old warriors of the independence era at least had personal integrity in common, he says. When [...] more »
A momentous day for Ireland and the eurozone
Spelling out the full horror of it, Robert Peston describes a crisis even deeper than publicly admitted. The one glimmer of hope is that the rich States of the EU and other major investors now admit they are intimately implicated. Rather than presenting themselves as strict but magnanimous bailers out of little Ireland, they are gradually being forced to recognise their [...] more »
A doubtful start to political “transformation” in the Republic
They do things differently in the Dail. I’m not surprised that a fine old row has greeted the news that in the debate on Moriarty and political reform starting today, TDs won’t be able to question FG ministers about the Report’s blunt criticism of political donations. I doubt if critics will get any further in questions [...] more »
Heaney belongs to us all
Long, long ago I shared an army helicopter with Olivia O’Leary and have thought of her affectionately ever since. Here, she pens an Irish journalist’s essay on Seamus Heaney. A tricky assignment this, as Heaney’s use of language is almost unbearably precise to us practitioners of the rougher trade. It is in his poems, [...] more »
The Republic has to prove itself a worthy partner in relations with the north all over again
Fintan O’Toole’s crisp review of the vast sweep of Irish corruption exposed in the era of tribunals mainly speaks for itself. As he shows, exposure alone does not lead inexorably to reform. Three questions: Can any Irish government and parliament, never mind one under such pressure of circumstances, summon up the massive political capital required [...] more »
Differential corporation tax now looks like a definite runner
As Live blog is on standby, it’s worth highlighting that George Osborne has just announced he will take part in a consultation on a lower than a 23% UK corporation tax rate for N Ireland, based on a paper out tomorrow. He emphasises this is due to the “unique” circustances of the Republic’s 12.5% rate (assuming this survives any [...] more »
An attempt to gloss over past misdeeds would kill the Coaltion at birth
Flood/Mahon, McCracken, Morris and Moriarty. The litany of judges’names associated with, shall we say, doubtful practices starkly exposes the desperate need for reform in the Republic’s body politic, even if the property bubble had never burst. Dubious practices were not the sole prerogative of Fianna Fail. Moriarty’s long list of conclusions, produced at a cost rivalling the [...] more »
Is corporation tax north and south on the brink of harmonisation?
New Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan’s pitch for more time to pay back the bailout at a steady predictable level seems to have hit deadlock over the sacred cow of 12.5 % corporation tax, the Irish Times’ Arthur Beesley reports. Mr Noonan also said the Government was not for turning on the country’s corporate taxation [...] more »
The knot is tied, how long will the honeymoon last?
Let’s face it , Fintan O’Toole could have been tougher on the incoming government. Maybe he thought they deserved a brief honeymoon. Does the sexual imagery give him away? His first verdict on the Programme for Government is as he puts it, a contrast between “a love potion and a chastity belt.” Fintan gives grudging welcome to the [...] more »
New Irish political reform plans make British eyes water
As predicted a new Irish coalition dubbing itself “The Government of National Recovery” emerged smoothly from six days of talks to tackle a economic and political crisis far deeper than that which confronted their British counterparts last May. I’ve blogged on the main elements of the key policies here. Now I turn to the [...] more »
The Programme and the Government of National Recovery. Let’s hope they live up to it.
At the first reading of their Programme for Government, the difficult bit, Fine Gael and the Labour party have succeeded impressively in closing most of the gap between them on tax and cuts. Not that they had much choice. They will implement the €6bn of tax rises and spending cuts announced in December’s budget by the outgoing [...] more »
Forming the inevitable coalition is the easy bit
No surprises here.. The new Fine Gael-Labour coalition government is planning to impose a property tax on family homes, to freeze income taxes and to review the universal social charge. Sources close to the negotiations revealed that Michael Noonan, the former Fine Gael leader, will be the next minister for finance The negotiators have also [...] more »
Political reform ideas for a new era in Ireland
Political reform proposals are emerging thick and fast in the wake of the Irish election to try to ensure that never again will such an existential crisis catch the whole country unawares. For outsiders the process just beginning will provide a new and fascinating test of the relevance of political reform to profound real life [...] more »
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Books
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Spare us a phoney row about racism, we’ve got enough on
A silly media row about racism just had to figure in the riots’ post mortem. Was the Tudor history expert David Starkey racist on Newsnight when he said: The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion. And black and white, boy and girl, operate in [...] read our review »
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Books: Listening to Van Morrison…
Great little review of Listening to Van Morrison by Griel Marcus… It’s a short book, not a biography or a career survey, but an attempt to follow those moments in Morrison’s music, as he’s made it from his first records with Them, from Belfast in 1965 to the present day, when something happens that breaks [...] read our review »
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The Creative Class and Northern Ireland
As part of NICVA’s series of masterclasses from its Centre for Economic Empowerment project, there was a morning seminar on the topic of the “creative class” (as popularised by Richard Florida) and its applicability to Northern Ireland. The agenda was to: Explain Richard Florida’s idea of the “creative class” and the link between economic outcomes [...] read our review »
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