The money is gone, they’ve largely been paid off. Failure to do so would have resulted in the immediate withdrawal of the ECB lending faciltiy to the irish banks and the grinding to a halt of the economy.
Other than FG are shit, no, please try again.
No it would not. Call their bluff. Go to the testicle store and buy a pair. Europe cannot afford the shock to banks that recklessly lent to Irish banks. They could try representing the people who voted for them, including me.
It is not about FG being shit. It is about doing your job.
They can.
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BlameGame, I am a FG supporter, but I agree with everything you say above,
the first 100 days have been depressing!
I myself feel cheated by our leader who knew for the last two years how bad things were,
and yet promised us things he knew he couldn’t deliver on - I’m thinking of Simon Coveney’s New Era Document - all lies just like Lynch’s FF Government in the late 70s.
We didn’t need to do this, there was no opposition from FF or SF, we just brought down the level of politics yet again
through our buying of the electorate.
But whatever about Enda, I’m most disappointed with James Reilly,
the man has been our Health spokesman for years and had all this time to come up with solutions.
He had made our view clear on the choice of the location for the childrens’ hospital for YEARS,
yet what does he do when he gets into power,
he only goes and orders a review of the decision - to further delay the project.
We had enough of this shit with Bertie the ditherer - did someone get to James Reilly?
Where you out the day the IMF/ EU came in and took over the country ? The current government and indeed the last government are like middle management . They are just doing what they are told while trying to keep the workers in line .
Time travel would be cool.
So now the sovereign owes money to everyone. We don’t have it.
Say sorry but there are people dying here. Your buddies got bailed out but we’re drawing the line.
We become the first country with a clean slate. Who wants in?
(So maybe we become the first dominoe to cause the collapse of capitalism, we can always go back in time and do it differently.)
Best line of the thread so far. Here is where we are at, for those who know that everything has changed entirely and have accepted it the worst is over. For those who still think the priority is to get be back to 2007, the worst is yet to come.
OK. Some basic economics 101 lessons. There are two ways to reduce costs and make your country more competitive and hence generate growth. One, devalue currency. Two, run high unemployment rates. Our government have blinded chosen the second. This is probably going to be looked on as one of the biggest economic catastrophes in history. It’s devastated the lives of most of a generation. > 15% overall unemployment with even larger numbers of male and under 30’s. And yes despite what people generally think the government is in control of unemployment rates, they new 100% what the deal is with not devaluing currency by leaving Euro.
We’re going to end up having to leave the Euro in 18 months anyway as we won’t be capable of securing a 2nd bail out for our own sake and we’ll be forced to default. Debts won’t be denominated in Euro’s due to default. Bank debt will be defaulted too. Not necessary a total default but a haircut and transfer to New Punt. Will be legislated for in some way.
It’s inevitable. Prolonging it is grossly unfair on the masses of unemployed, those having to emigrate and those losing their homes as a result of not being able to pay mortgage. And most others are barely coping due to monstrous decrease in take home pay and increasing interest rates. The situation is only going to get worse from here with current non plan.
It’s ultra clear at this stage that Fine Gael do not have a plan. They’re fronting the same bunch of decision makers/speech writers as last government. They’re messing round the edges with stuff that doesn’t matter and blundering with the big stuff that does. They’re increasing taxes/levies/charges rather than cutting costs.
Unfortunately “everybody knows” is competently correct, OW. The time for effective action is long gone. Or at least effective actions given the current realities of the domestic political situation.
Ireland was always a bit of a pretend country. All the difficult problems that normal small countries have to to deal with were deal with by successive governments by either outsourced them (usually to the UK) or by completely ignoring them. The events of 2008 were dealt with in the usual way, either ignored or attempts were made to outsource them. But this time the governments bluff was called and they found themselves sliding inexorable deeper in a disastrous situation.
A bit like the mid 1950’s. The only difference is that unlike the 1950s its not a matter of just stop doing stupid things and things will quickly improve. Very fundamental changes will have to be made to the state if it is going to recover any time soon. But I see absolutely no mandate so far to make these changes. So in the short term you are looking at paralysis. Very frustrating when most of us here know that the substantive changes are just a matter of the greedy VI’s reigning in their greed. But getting those changes though will be pretty much impossible until the current complacent political situation gets a severe external shock. Too many VI’s, and all will fight till the bitter end to defend their advantage. It seems losing your banking system, being locked out of the bond market, and having to get a bail out from the IMF is still not enough to inject an air of reality into the current Irish political universe.
There are really only two alternatives. The first is to stick with the Troika’s program. The other is some variant of Morgan Kelly’s approach involving a crash program of deficit reduction. Both entail major risks of one sort or another. Which you prefer is likely to be fairly closely related to your personal circumstances.
For “insider” such as the government, the Troika program is by far the more appealing prospect, since it provides the best chance of maintaining the current social hierarchy.
Which is the better option for someone who will always be a net recipient of transfers from the state, and currently is provided with many services entirely free by the state?
Don’t think either approach will effect the social heirarchy as MK’s approach will involve huge reductions to the welfare budget in a very short time period something which will be more keenly felt by the “outsiders”. The troika way, painful as it is, gives the space to rebalance things more gradually. It also increases the national debt and future interest repayments but as said earlier there is some scope for renegotiating that further down the road. The best thing to my mind is to stay on the road rather than fall off the cliff.
I see Blamegame has just put it more succinctly.
You are assuming I’m some newbie poster, my posts go back to 2006 I’ve been watching via the net since 2003 and you’ve missed my fundamental observation.
My original post starting off this thread for the purpose of clarity
An observation I have been making clear from day one but seems to fly by the general discourse. All I have highlighted is that FG have now conformed to this brutal pattern. So what am I yakking about.
I’m not talking about defaults.
I am not talking about EURO crisis resolutions.
I am talking about source.
I am saying there is no plan becasue there is no VISION and to paraphrase JMC… the Vision has been “outsourced”.
It’s a Sovereign lobotomy.
Advocate is the generally used term, but hey, your profession is devil’s agent I suppose 
Fine. Just sack the boards of them and have the organisation report to the relevant civil service department. It is the boards of quangos that I object to, not the work that they do.
Er, yeah and they’re paying for all of these out of their own pocket so that’s fine, innit…
Well, they are considering bits of legislation. Best practice as espoused by FG themselves was to publish heads of legislation as soon as possible and allow debate to start before the detail is finalised. Instead we are getting the ususal same-ole imposed and not better for being thought of for a long time legislation. What are we vogons?
That’s because you are in Dublin. For the rest of the country it’s bollocks.
Again, the FG promised honesty even if it hurt. We are talking about failure to deliver on promises, not what is a sensible promise to make.
FoI is something that really exercises me. I don’t know why as lots of good stuff comes out still, but then you see some of the stuff in wikileaks and you know there is so much more.
Yes they can. If they can’t, legislation can be provided to make it so. They don’t have to publish anyone who is not current on their payments, but anyone who is not is effectively in receivership and that would be published anyway.
For sure there are some awful ole gombeens in FG. That doesn’t mean that we should let them away with failings that are within their power to do something about. Even if all they do is express frustration themselves, at least they will be living up to their promise to be open about what’s going on.
It’s depressing, it’s a lost decade, but that seems to be about the size of it.
Nice one lads. Nice one. We’ve hit the Consensus Jackpot! Yippee! The Plan is no Plan whooowowo!! Go Plan “no Plan”!
What a waste of a thread. 
Hey, the six-thousand or so members of the 'pin are not the problem. It is the two million other people who want to be back in 2006 or 2005 at the earliest. While there might be movement about all sorts of other things, denial is still rampant about the state of the economy and particularly government finances.
None of this solves our Visionary deficit.
This is interesting. I have thought for ages that leaving the Euro is the obvious thing for us to do, the sane thing, the way to break free of the loan sharks to some extent and regain control. This is put into words here! What is the problem with leaving the Euro though? Can we not get out of it and leave the other member states peacefully earning their own Euros, enjoying that currency, and we get our own one on course? Or do we automatically annihilate the whole Union as we hurtle towards out low value currency? Why are all government people totally terrified of the re emerging Punt Nua? Surely then if we get our money into shape as a New Punt, we can do like Iceland and plummet into recession, devalue, get thru it, then genuinely get ourselves on track and actually turn that famous corner Brian L kept alluding to. That’s my stance on this anyway!
It sure was fun in 2005 and 2006 though, wasn’t it? All those interesting fake tans, pink champagne, shopping trips to NYC, the average Irish child having visited Disneyland 5 times, and your plumber’s housekeeper having 11 investment properties in Beijing… Those really were the days
