Republic – Page 25 – Slugger O'Toole

Irish bailout fate mixed up in the bigger chaos, with no solution in sight

Brian Walker on May 8, 2011, 11:48 pm

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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 of cards, we don’t have many cards, in these negotiations. There is a right time to play your most important cards,” he said. Hopes of …

Don’t stab at Irish political reform

Brian Walker on April 18, 2011, 10:57 am

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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 (although I have my doubts about the former). What’s wrong is that the process so far belongs exclusively to the political elite who incubated the …

Garret fails to account for era of political corruption

Brian Walker on April 17, 2011, 11:37 pm

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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 they were about to pass on, the Fianna Failers among them chose Garret and other political opponents to confide their death bed fears. when …

A momentous day for Ireland and the eurozone

Brian Walker on March 31, 2011, 10:14 am

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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 self-interest in a better system to protect ther own savers who invested in Ireland in the first place. And yet the final form of that recognition …

A doubtful start to political “transformation” in the Republic

Brian Walker on March 29, 2011, 11:09 am

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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 to Labour Communications minister Pat Rabbitte. I’m sure the convention applies in Dublin that one government is not responsible for the doings of another. Party …

Heaney belongs to us all

Brian Walker on March 26, 2011, 6:15 pm

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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, however, that Heaney has made his most important contribution to our thinking about the North. He has helped to expand our borders and allowed us …

The Republic has to prove itself a worthy partner in relations with the north all over again

Brian Walker on March 26, 2011, 12:21 pm

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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 to change the culture? If not, can the outside onlooker be blamed for concluding that these people aren’t fit to govern themselves? While the Celtic …

Differential corporation tax now looks like a definite runner

Brian Walker on March 23, 2011, 2:16 pm

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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 revised bailout terms intact.) I guess this means lower corporation tax will now really happpen. But when and at what rate? It doesn’t seem like a …

An attempt to gloss over past misdeeds would kill the Coaltion at birth

Brian Walker on March 23, 2011, 10:52 am

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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 Saville Inquiry’s, was as shocking as it was expected. While civil servants insisted their advice was not compromised, Moriarity finds that minister Lowry “secured the …

Is corporation tax north and south on the brink of harmonisation?

Brian Walker on March 15, 2011, 8:01 am

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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 rate, but French finance minister Christine Lagarde called for a “gesture” in return for lower bailout costs. “Without that we won’t budge on the interest …

The knot is tied, how long will the honeymoon last?

Brian Walker on March 8, 2011, 11:34 pm

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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 coalition’s political reform proposals, only to find them impotent in the face of the financial reforms he deems necessary, which the coalition will find “impossible.” If true, …

New Irish political reform plans make British eyes water

Brian Walker on March 7, 2011, 11:12 am

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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 sweeping political and constitutional reforms in the Porgramme for Government, most easily downloaded from this page of the Irish Times, and beginning on p18 of the Programme. …

The Programme and the Government of National Recovery. Let’s hope they live up to it.

Brian Walker on March 7, 2011, 12:01 am

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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 Fianna Fáil government. A further €3bn of public spending cuts and tax increases will be introduced in 2012, A compromise was struck between Fine Gael’s …

Forming the inevitable coalition is the easy bit

Brian Walker on March 6, 2011, 11:55 am

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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 agreed to bring the exchequer deficit within EU guidelines by 2015 — a widely-expected compromise between Fine Gael’s proposal of 2014 and Labour’s preferred date …

Political reform ideas for a new era in Ireland

Brian Walker on March 4, 2011, 11:00 am

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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 concerns and rather than a dry as dust theoretical exercise for elites. It is a relief to see that the debate so far avoids blue …

Not the old bogey of Sinn Fein again!

Brian Walker on March 2, 2011, 10:50 am

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The politics of it are all too familiar. Peter Robinson raises the bogey of Sinn Fein to get the vote out and try to prevent SF becoming the largest party in the Assembly. “Sinn Féin will be in government, I’ve no doubt about that whatsoever. But there’s no point to be in government just to be the mudguard of some conservative party, we want to be the vanguard… We’re in government in the north and let me be quite assertive …

Fine Gael and Labour should strike out now for a new deal

Brian Walker on February 27, 2011, 12:19 am

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With Fianna Fail now finally swept aide, will the two victorious parties dare make the one move that would weld them together in an instant and all Ireland with them? Only the most starry-eyed europhile would fail to give two cheers for the briefings emerging from Dublin that the about-to-be-born FG-Labour coalition really mean it. They will seriously try to renegotiate the bailout. They may yet confound the ranks of critics in advance who balked at standing themselves, Browne, O’Toole …

As Ireland votes, a note of optimism

Brian Walker on February 25, 2011, 10:38 am

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The Economist pronounces: It is true that Ireland will not soon pull itself from the economic bog. Recovery will be slow at best, particularly if an inflation-wary ECB starts to jack up interest rates. Unemployment is likely to stay in double figures for some time. Some fear that the cost of servicing the debts to the EU and IMF, and of feeding the insatiable maw of the banks, will eventually force Ireland into a debt restructuring. This would be a …

Will Ireland’s politicians ever stop chasing hearses and kissing chickens?

Brian Walker on February 24, 2011, 12:44 pm

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I naturally defer to all those bloggers who are chasing round Ireland in search of wisdom and craic. Nevertheless, I’ve come to a few conclusions about the Irish general election, seen from afar. I’m struck by the disconnect between the campaign and the realities of the crisis, the failure to rise to the level of events. Although a democratic necessity this supposed watershed of an election comes across as a diversion, more like the last hurrah of a generation of …

“Northern Ireland is a virtually irrelevant question in the Republic these days”

Pete Baker on February 23, 2011, 4:35 pm

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As Henry McDonald, in the Belfast Telegraph, notes of the Irish general election Rancour, too, is the order of the day in the secondary battle of this election – the one between Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein to see who comes in third place. The Soldiers of Destiny have turned their firepower on Sinn Fein, raising Gerry Adams’ IRA past, the Northern Bank robbery and the disappearance and murder of Jean McConville. Adams, meanwhile, made a huge gaffe on radio …