Category Archives: Politics

Seeing the wood for the trees

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In fairness the media were reasonably balanced at this year’s Ard Fheis, indeed the Irish Times were quite proactive and I even featured myself in their innovative video blog sequence, captured from the conference centre:

Ard Fheis Video Blog

However I was disappointed with later ‘colour’ pieces from the same stable, where Miriam Lord put the boot in, choosing to focus on what are effectively ghosts from the past, rather than engaging with the actual live delegates, motions, workshops etc.

I penned the below letter to the Times in response to one of her pieces:

A Chara,

I was very pleased to be a participant in the very successful Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis last weekend. A very constructive weekend of policy discussion, organisational reform and internal renewal including elections where I was privileged to join many other new faces on the national executive. I noted your coverage included juxtaposition of the ‘working abroad’ expo which was held concurrently at the RDS and some snide commentary of same (Miriam Lord, March 5th). On that theme it should be noted that many of our delegates also visited that expo whilst at the Ard Fheis, being in a similar boat to any other expo attendees. It should also be noted that our gathering this year included new cumainn formed from members already abroad, representatives from the exiled Diaspora, indeed some election candidates and very valued voices were amongst their number.

The vast, vast majority of the 4,000 delegates at Ard Fheis and the 40,000 Fianna Fáil members nationwide experience the difficulties of recession as starkly as anyone else.

We remain determined to find constructive solutions to these problems. Others may differ on the political way forward. But the Fianna Fáil party is not and never was an elite cabal but is a party of ordinary members living ordinary lives and with the same ordinary problems as everyone else. Rather than media images obsessing on a handful of familiar faces in the crowd they should perhaps listen to the other 3,997 delegates there in attendance and actually now in the driving seat. The get together at the weekend was in one large part about the membership taking back ownership of the party and that project is well underway.

Is mise,

James Lawless

As I have said so many times on this blog and elsewhere, the party is not one or two voices (or faces) but an army of members whose views should be canvassed by anyone wanting to understand the party in 2012. Anyway we will keep moving on, and as I said in that video clip, and have often said on this blog, the members are now retaking the party and we shall certainly not be surrendering it lightly ever again. One Member, One Vote was a fantastic result at the weekend, changing an 80 year old rule on a delegate system, and allowing every member of the party from now on have equal say. The delegate system certainly wasn’t the cause of the recent problems but its replacement is symbolic of the appetite for and capacity for change the party is showing today.

4,000 delegates at the Ard Fheis, 1,500 members at the Leader’s Dinner last October, 550K raised by ordinary members in the national draw, our new members’ magazine into its 3rd edition,  2nd place in Dublin West by-election months after we’d been written off and now a brand new Ard Chomairle ready to take the reins on the renewal.

Change has come and will continue to come to Fianna Fáil.

CUISLE – Pulse of the Party

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One project I’ve been working on recently is a new communications channel within Fianna Fáil. As readers of this blog will probably be aware I had “issues” with the communications style of the previous leadership and one of the key things for the party to tackle in Renewal is that whole area, both internally and externally.

cuisle_cover.jpg

My experience over the past few years has been that there are plenty of individual members out there in social media and other fora with strong opinions and articulate viewpoints even at times when the ‘senior party’ was more reticent. Thankfully nowadays the party is all singing off the same hymn sheet at every level but either way our new project is designed to give those members a voice and an outlet for discussion, debate, to compare notes and to renew the party.

The results went to press last month and are now in circulation amongst the party membership. Our new magazine is called CUISLE (“Pulse”, translated) and contains 32 pages of opinion, commentary, analysis some positive, some stark, all candid and all unfiltered and straight from the membership. I am delighted with the results and great to finally now see it in print. I have a few pieces in it myself and was honoured to serve on the editorial board. This is hopefully just one of many projects over the months and years ahead that will allow the membership renew the party and exercise democracy and direction as to where and what sort of party we all want to end up with.  We might have a smaller party but perhaps a small passionate membership is better than a horde of good time golfers. Anything in life is what you make it and now we have that chance. If any readers would like a copy of the new mag, get in touch.

Fine Gael and Labour Cllrs have noone left to blame..

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Chairperson of Sallins Fianna Fáil, James Lawless has called for urgent action on roads at various locations across Kildare and says that the Fine Gael / Labour ruling bloc can no longer shift the blame onto national government or claim they have no control over spending.

“For years Fine Gael and Labour have it both ways by controlling the council yet playing the blame game that Fianna Fáil were in power and that they had no control. But that ignores the reality that Fianna Fáil have not held a majority on Kildare county council for over twenty years. And now that Fine Gael and Labour Ministers are undeniably holding the purse strings at both national and local level they can not hide behind the excuse of being powerless any longer” said James. “What’s more even as recently as last January 2011, when Fianna Fáil were in power nationally, one of the last acts of the outgoing Fianna Fáil Minister Pat Carey was to allocate a funding of 900 Million from the Department of Transport to be allocated for regional road works by local authorities. This money was made available and ring fenced even in a time of scarcity and that money should now be put to use by the Kildare County Council on the many urgent projects long outstanding throughout the constituency.” James explained.

“So the blanket response of no money is not accurate on a number of levels. In the current council budget an allocation of 25 million is contained for road and transportation improvements. Resource are scarce but there is funding available and these scarce resources need to be prioritised to those urgent projects most in need”.

“A critical example close to home is the Osberstown junction on the Sallins – Naas road. This junction sees huge volume of traffic traverse the main thoroughfare whilst traffic from the neighbouring estates and side-road struggle continuously to find a break in fast moving traffic. Traffic from Caragh also uses this junction and the volumes of throughput have only multiplied in recent years. Yet despite being an accident waiting to happen we have yet to see any action at this junction barring the farcical situation where traffic lights were erected and then taken down again almost as quickly, all in the space of a crazy three weeks at the midpoint in the crisis” according to James.

“Scarce resources need to be targeted to those areas most in need and this junction is surely one of them” James continued. “The excuse of no funds is a blanket one that is not entirely accurate and the council needs to prioritise this and many other outstanding works for the welfare and safety of people at all these locations“ concluded James.

More Greeks and Marbles

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Just some very quick thoughts on matters European. Firstly the news from the summit yesterday is good, the interest rate cut is undoubtedly welcome and the longer repayment period will make cash flow and annual budgeting easier in the meantime.

It does mean we are paying back more interest in the longer term but again I think that’s a price worth paying for more day to day flexibility. Also with presumed inflation the capital amount to be repaid should be less in real terms by redemption date.

Really the Greek difficulty was Ireland’s opportunity. Ireland, along with Portugal and possibly Spain, got lucky in terms of the wider European events conspiring to mean an overall solution had to be brokered. In the early days the thinking from Europe seemed to have been to “make an example” out of Ireland however as the solution was rolled out across further countries and as the Euro was coming under increased pressure, eventually something had to give. It seems Greece itself will be permitted a degree of default but that it will be strictly ring-fenced to that jurisdiction. Not convinced this will work, neither is Shane Ross.

A good break for Ireland though. Of course the interest rate cut only applies to one element of the bailout, the EFSF proportion, for all their malignment, the IMF rate was always more hospitable (c. 3%) and then there is EU / ECB funding, the latter through the backdoor into the Irish banks (which is partly what forced the bailout to be formalised in the first place) and other arrangements. I understand the bilateral agreements with UK and other countries (Sweden?) have yet to be drawn down, so the rate on those may not have been finalised yet. So the interest rate cut is only one part of a much wider pie, including many lenders and many different rates, but still a welcome development all the same. Not a panacea but sure we’ll take a Parthenon while it’s going spare.

Caveat Emptor – let the guarantor beware

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Contracts to pay for the debt of another are where a creditor loans money to a principal debtor and another party, a secondary debtor, undertakes to be responsible for the repayment. The Statute of Frauds Act 1695 defines which contracts must be committed to writing and which can be enforced on solely oral evidence. In this case a verbal indemnity can be enforced on own merits but a guarantee must be committed to writing. There are many who may wish the government guarantee given on the night of September 2008 was given only in verbal form.

My last post was about Brian Lenihan and the tragic echo of unfulfilled promise ala Camelot / Kennedy. The loss manifests in what might have been earlier as much as what might have been later in the sense that his time at the wheel came when the ship was already headed for the rocks.

His period at the helm of Ireland’s finances was possibly the most turbulent any Minister has had to face since independence and must have been especially so for a new Minister only in his brief a matter of weeks when the crisis hit. One cannot help but wonder what might have been had Bertie got over his own issues and recognised talent earlier, and had Brian’s undoubted ability at the cabinet table in the preceding years.

Unfortunately the period will be remembered probably for a series of fairly cataclysmic events running roughly from the guarantee up to the week the IMF landed and including the austerity budgets in between. The full story of those weeks, months, years has yet to be written and it may be many moons before we find out what really went on behind the scenes through that time, if ever. Yet some revelations have emerged into public discourse already such as in Brian’s own BBC interview and in Morgan Kelly’s recent Irish Times piece. I was surprised having coffee with some colleagues recently that these more recent revelations did not seem to have pervaded public consciousness to the extent that I might have expected.

The basic facts are clear. A guarantee was extended in 2009 to cover banking debt, this increased the national debt, along with rapid deterioration in the public finances this created twin pillars of economic and banking crises which proved insoluble in national isolation. Enter the IMF to replace the bond markets along with a programme of austerity agreed in conjunction with the EU and we are where we are.

That much, I believe is understood and uncontested. What is less clear is how, who, why the various events unfolded as they did.

The crisis in the public finances I believe could have been corrected by the austerity budgets. That particular cycle had happened before and may happen again. It was the banking crisis that really did the damage. The banking guarantee appears in hindsight to have been a mistake, yet who is to say what would have happened in the alternative, whether the banking system and perhaps the entire economy collapsed literally overnight? Could a single bank (Anglo) been allowed go to the wall, as effectively happened with Lehman brothers in the states previously. It is intuitively attractive to suggest that it could, yet it seems the prevailing argument against was really one of Euro Zone stability, rather or at least more so, than any vested local interest. Brian Lenihan in an interview for FrontLine in the early days of the crisis repeatedly stressed that no European bank had failed in the post war ear and it wouldn’t start here now. It is possible there was an element of pride in this, that Ireland would not be the one to let the side down. It is also possible and quite probable that the EU were strong arming the position and no bank would be allowed to fail without a flood of punitive consequences for the errant nation. It is also the case that despite the scornful commentary since, the weight of economic opinion at the time was divided on the issue with later critics such as McWilliams at the time calling for such a solution. In fact on the night the guarantee was voted through the Dáil, it was supported by all parties, except Labour who alone opposed. In fact, while it seems ironic now, I remember a Fine Gael friend saying to to me at the time “Labour will pay for this” (for opposing the guarauntee) . And yet one can’t help feel Labour opposed merely because they could as they grand standed on so many other issues in opposition. And of course FG swept home to a huge election victory despite having supported it.

I will return to this subject again in later posts..