SINN FÉIN - KEEP LEFT

SINN FÉIN KEEP LEFT SITE IS CLOSING DOWN

2011-06-01T19:35:00.002+01:00

The aim of this site was to encourage left wing debate amongst party members and supporters. Unfortunately, we have not suceeded in this aim and have been unable to generate enough articles and debate to keep this site going.

We never aimed at using this site as an opportunity to simply express the views of 4 - 5 people, but rather to go beyond that.

We here still believe Sinn Féin offers the only realistic left wing political alternative in this country and would encourage as many people as possible to become involved in the party.

Thank you to all those who read the pieces on this site and to those who have contributed and perhaps others will suceeded where we have failed.

The General Election - A Members View.

2011-04-25T16:54:00.001+01:00

While we undoubtedly achieved huge gains in the General Election, I can't help but feel that some of these gains were only made through brutally hard work and a certain amount of good fortune. The truth I discovered in this campaign is that our party is still not fit for purpose despite four years since efforts begun following the disasterious General Election campaign in 2007.

Many of the problems identified then, and further identified in Killian Forde's departing note, still exist and show no signs of being rectified, and until they are rectified I feel that the party will be continuing to float along while being the organisational equivalent of the Titanic. Briefly, I'll outline some of the problems I've identified:

1. Communication: The party still lacks effective communications between grassroots and it's structures. For someone trying to flag some issue or aid in some project it's still, as Killian Forde pointed out, a near impossible task of attempting to navigate through a maze of bureaucracy whether policy groups, committees, or an executive that is uncontactable directly.

2. Structures: We have redundant structures which function as simply a rubber stamp for the decisions of subordinate structures, one fine example being the Cuige. Sinn Fein is the only organisation I've been a member of in which the concept of a structure which by-passes all other structures has been conceived or even found necessary, going by the name of the Organisation Development Unit (ODU). Surely this indicates that there are dire organisational problems, which the ODU should have been a temporary fix to until some kind of reform could take place.

3. Appointments: There has still been no changes to how the party seeks candidates for full-time positions within the party. This is still resulting in people who lack qualification in the areas they are responsible for getting the job. An odd advertisement in An Phoblacht does not count as transparent recruitment while other jobs are appointed almost without competition. The party is still in clear breach of employment legislation as long as this practice continues.

To conclude, I think that it is vital that our party must be a mirror reflection of the Ireland we wish to create. The grand aspirations are no good if those who seek to bring them about cannot act in their image.

In about 30 years time

2011-03-13T22:06:00.001Z

The talented drawer Brian Moore has passed away. He was the man behind the "Cormac" cartoons in An Phoblacht.

Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams TD has expressed his ‘deep sadness’ at the death of Brian Moore and he has extended his condolences to Brian’s partner Máire and their son Cormac, to Máire’s son Conor and Brian’s brothers Gerry and Danny and his sister Maura, and his family circle and friends.

Gerry said:

“Brian will be best known to most republicans as the irrepressible and politically perceptive cartoonist Cormac who for many years was a regular feature in Republican News and then in An Phoblacht/Republican News after the papers merged.

His weekly contribution to the paper touched on the big issues of the time; the war, repression, sectarianism, collusion and much more. His cartoons lampooned the British Army and RUC; the British government and media. If he witnessed injustice he turned his satirist’s pen loose.

His cartoons were incisive and funny. And for many readers the back page was the first they read to see what gem ‘Notes by Cormac’ held for them. Brian was a republican and a socialist.
He supported the struggle for freedom and the peace process.
In the 70’s he published political comics and he contributed to other publications, including the British weekly Socialist Challenge and Fortnight magazine.

Brian was also a song writer and performer. He founded ‘The People of No Property’ with whom he sang.
His death is a huge loss for his family but also to the wider republican community.

Go ndeanfaidh Dia trocaire air.

Victory for Peace Movement in new Programme for Government

2011-03-12T20:54:00.000Z

Press Statement 8/3/2011 Peace & Neutrality Alliance

Victory for Peace Movement in new Programme for Government

The Peace & Neutrality Alliance (PANA) welcomes the statement in the new Labour/Fine Gael Programme for Government, promising to implement international law in terms of the use of Irish airspace and airports by foreign powers. Under the section Foreign Affairs, ODA and Defence, the Programme says: "We will enforce the prohibition on the use of Irish airspace, airports and related facilities for purpose not in line with dictates of
international law."

PANA Chair, Roger Cole, a delegate to the Conference, asked for clarification of this statement in the Programme for Government. He pointed out that a key part of international law governing the behaviour of Neutral States is the Hague Convention of 1907 which prohibits the use of a neutral state's territory to prosecute a war. Switzerland quotes the Hague Convention to explain why no US planes land in Zurich Airport on their way to and from their wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mr. Cole asked: " Does this mean the termination of the use of Shannon Airport by US troops in these permanent ongoing wars?" citing Afghanistan and Iraq.

Eamon Gilmore in his closing speech to the Conference, replied to Roger Cole's call for clarification. The Labour Party Leader stated that: "Yes, Roger Cole has pointed out an area where is there is a difference" and "that it may be hard to believe" but that the statement in the Programme for the Government " does mean what is says".

In the context of the question asked and the reply given, this means the new government will, like the Government of Switzerland, implement the Hague Convention, and terminate the use of Shannon Airport by US troops on their way to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We would hope the new incoming government would do so on Easter Monday, the 95th anniversary of the 1916 Rising. PANA will also seek an early meeting with the new Minister for Foreign Affairs.

for more information contact Roger Cole, Chair of PANA Tel: 087-2611597 or Seamas Ratigan Tel: 086-8369793

Gibraltar

2011-03-06T09:00:00.002Z

23 years ago today Volunteers Danny McCann, Seán Savage, and Mairéad Farrell were shot dead in Gibraltar.

A Progressive Oppostion

2011-02-27T12:26:00.000Z

It looks likely that there will be 14 Sinn Féin and up to 10 progressive left deputies in the incoming Dáil.

These 24 progressive left Representatives need to eclipse Fianna Fail as the opposition to the incoming conservative administration and ensure that victory could be grasped from the jaws of defeat, so to speak. This is a platform that we could barely imagine a few short weeks ago,

The election campaign was dominated bu the specific budgetary issues and the immediacy of the crisis facing the people. Ideology struggled to feature. It can now be a central feature of debate from the first day of the incoming Dáil. The people can hear how and why we are in this crisis and just how similar FG and FF are. It will also continue to force the members of the Labour Party to examine how best to use their political strength.

I would make a particular appeal to the members of the ULA to resist the temptation to take an elitist view of what it means to be on the progressive left. The days of political sectarianism on the left need to be left behind.

The British Labour politician Tony Benn described British Labour something like this. Labour is not a socialist party, but it has many Socialist within it. SF could be described that way, Certainly, the ULA should reach out to the membership of SF. It would be good for both groups. All activism is educational and it works both ways.

Language Freedom movement redux eile

2011-02-16T16:30:00.000Z

Fine Gael seem to think that the Irish language is a barrier to progress. They are trying to lower Irish's status as a Leaving cert language.

Just like the Language freedom movement Fine Gael is bringing the past back into Irish politics.

Irish is a defining feature of Ireland. No matter where you are from or what your background the Irish language is the patrimony of everyone.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail have together tolerated 8 decades of failed language policy. For me the failure to restore Irish is a good example of how failure is tolerated in this state. Fine Gael instead of improving the teaching of Irish has responded with the out dated agenda of weakening it.

A move which has been widely condemned by ordinary students and people.

FG or FF does not have a right to destroy our language.

Keeping jobs, giving new opportunities and stopping emigration

2011-02-14T11:44:00.001Z

In 2010, unemployment peaked at almost 460,000. There are 439,000 people on the Live Register. The country has also seen a return to high levels of emigration with the ESRI recently predicting that 100,000 people, mainly young people, would leave Ireland over the next two years. This level of emigration exceeds anything seen during the worst days of the 1980s. Unemployment is the only figure that matters for those of us concerned with economic recovery.

Employment, not percentage increases in GNP/GDP, is a true reflection of meaningful economic growth. High rates of unemployment don’t just spell bad news for the economy now – structural unemployment into the future will have a devastating impact on any hope of restoring the Irish economy.

The relationship between jobs and the deficit is a clear one – more people in work produce higher levels of spending activity and tax revenues, as well as lower welfare payments. In 2008, employment in this State fell by 84,000. This was associated with a decrease in tax revenues of €6.5billion and an increase in social welfare payments of at least €2.5billion, a total deterioration in Government finances of €9billion.

Sinn Féin’s employment and financial stimulus package costs €7.595billion and will create 160,000 jobs directly over the medium-term, tens of thousands more jobs indirectly and also save thousands of jobs. The full cost of our employment stimulus amounts to €7billion. The financial stimulus of €595million is accounted for in our tax and saving measures. The multiplier effect on GDP of creating 160,000 jobs would amount to 1.8%, according to ESRI figures. And this would be real GDP growth – not growth based on the profits of multinational companies based here.

Our stimulus is about providing immediate and direct employment in key sectors such as infrastructure in the immediate term. But in the longer term the impact of our stimulus plan would see the State’s competitiveness increase as we become a world leader in green energy, IT and research and development, in addition to having world-class infrastructure to attract Foreign Direct Investment and support indigenous enterprise for longer-term employment creation.

Furthermore, the completion of key strategic infrastructure projects, such as the National Broadband scheme, and the improvements in the education and health services, will make Ireland more competitive and put us in a better position for economic recovery in the years ahead. In addition to these proposals, Sinn Féin has a strategy to boost the tourism sector including developing tourist attractions and amenities and a plan to create a new generation of co-operatives. This sustainable, long-term employment would broaden the tax base and secure it.

The 10-point plan

1. A jobs stimulus. Sinn Féin is advocating the transfer of €7billion from the National Pension Reserve Fund (NPRF) for a State-wide investment programme (stimulus). We are calling for a transfer from the fund of €7billion –– for a jobs stimulus package. This money should be administered out of the NPRF over the next 3.5 years, with the Department of Finance signing off on proposals as they are submitted from the departments. All proposals would have to have ‘value for money’ clauses and total number of people that would be employed under the proposal. €2billion would be spent on the employment stimulus in 2011.

2. Growing the agri-food sector. Deploy funding of €500million to set up and support central production hubs for SMEs involved in the agri-food sector so that they have access to advice, support and, most importantly, infrastructure and equipment perhaps not available to early- stage start-ups. We envisage existing agencies such as Enterprise Ireland and An Bord Bia to come together with Government to drive this project. This would create 5,000 direct jobs and 2,000 indirect jobs.

Coupled with regional networking, partnerships and branding across the whole country, this measure alone has even greater potential for job creation. Investment in agriculture and the agri-food sector provides high returns for the Irish economy. The multiplier for agriculture on GDP is 1.73 and 1.76 for the food and drink manufacturing industry (if you invest €1million in these sectors, the wider economy sees a return of €1.73 million). Funding required = €500m.

Creating jobs through the construction of essential infrastructure

3. Health infrastructure. We would build 100 new primary healthcare centres throughout the State at a cost of €500million. This would alleviate the strain on our main hospitals. It would provide local healthcare for a variety of medical conditions and an excellent resource for communities. The building of these centres would create in the region of 5,000 jobs and 2,000 indirect jobs. Our pre-Budget submission provides for the lifting of the current recruitment embargo, which would allow all these centres to be staffed in the years following their construction. Funding required = €500m.

4. School buildings and refurbishment. An increased school-building and refurbishment programme for 2011 to take at least 125 schools through the construction stage. A 16-classroom generic repeat design project costs approximately €3million in current market conditions. This would cost €375million in total and create approximately 4,000 jobs directly and 1,600 indirect jobs. A minimum of 150 school-building projects should enter the architectural and planning stage each year so that school projects are ready to proceed as quickly as possible to the construction phases. Funding required = €375m.

5. Crèches. Build 100 crèches State-wide for state childcare provision at a cost of €200million, creating 2,000 jobs directly and 800 jobs indirectly. Funding required = €200m.

Assisting businesses and entrepreneurs

6. Improving communications infrastructure. Augment the current National Broadband Scheme to provide a fibre-optic island-wide network. Fast-track the €435million spend so that it is delivered beginning in 2011 instead of 2013. This will provide in the region of 4,500 jobs directly and 1,700 jobs indirectly. Funding required = €435m.

7. Assistance for those starting a business. Change the PRSI system to create a safety-net for those who attempt to establish their own business. Provide a one-stop-shop virtual helpdesk for business start-ups with legal, HR, patents, accountancy and funding advice. In addition, create an innovation website where budding entrepreneurs can pitch their business and invention ideas to investors at home and abroad. Funding required = €2 million.

8. Helping businesses to export. Create a ‘Sales Ireland’ strategy to help Irish firms access export markets outside the US and Britain and to help Irish firms looking to set up manufacturing businesses with the potential to compete with out largest imports, including R&D funding. Currently, almost 90% of exports come from foreign-owned multinationals and foreign-owned firms import over 86% of the materials they use, bypassing Irish firms.

9. Maximising employment on public projects. Rethink local authority and public sector construction, service and procurement contracts to create a level pitch for small businesses to tender. Breaking tenders into smaller pieces allows contractors with less significant turnover to efficiently tender for work. Make the employment of a set amount of apprentices a condition on which public contracts are awarded to contractors building public infrastructure.

10. Initiate a ‘Frontline Services Aides Scheme’ where people are employed to take on specific work from overworked frontline workers (e.g. civilianising administrative work that is currently done by Gardaí). Funding required = €250m.

The Sinn Fein election manifesto

2011-02-13T11:36:00.001Z

In this election Sinn Fein, as set out in our policy manifesto, is seeking a mandate to safeguard society and the economy. We cant afford to sacrifice either to the narrow interests of a small clique - either here or in the banking halls of Europe and the policy rooms of the IMF. Too much is at stake. Now we have to stand up for our interests as a society. Beyond this Sinn Fein will be seeking a mandate for:

- Root and Branch reform of the Political System to produce a really open and accountable form of government that empowers citizens and end the influence of the political elites.

- The protection and creation of jobs.
- An end to the two tier health system and and the two tier education system
- The proper use of Ireland’s natural resources in the common good

- Continued support for the Peace Process and the Good Friday Agreement

http://www.sinnfein.ie/files/SF_GeneralElectionManifesto2011.pdf

If you cant canvass maybe this is an option.

2011-02-12T11:29:00.001Z

The election is in full swing now and the party, its candidates, activists and supporters are putting their backs to the wheel in terms of time and money.

Its going to be a challenging year for Sinn Fein. Elections to be fought in the southern and northern areas of our country.

If you can canvass or help out please do contact your local cumainn. Look at the map on the side of this page to find your nearest cumainn.

If you cant canvass for any reason but want to make a contribution then a donation is an option. These are difficult times as we all know but it may be an option for some.

Please consider it if you can. The Sinn Fein donation link is here

Safeguarding Irish interests

2011-02-11T11:28:00.000Z

Gurdgiev, Ross and even the Fine Gael man agreeing Sinn Fein and Pearse is bang on the money

Please Like our new Facebook page

2011-02-10T18:44:00.000Z

We experienced some technical issues recently and our Facebook page closed.

In order to avoid that happening again we have moved over to a Facebook fan page.

This will allow us to keep building our friends and keep in contact with you all.

Our new page is here - Please hit like.

We'll have it back up to full speed in the next few days

Helping young people to stay at home

2011-02-10T11:08:00.001Z

6 reasons to vote for Sinn Féin in this election

2011-02-10T11:02:00.001Z

1. Sinn Féin has shown that there is a better way. We were the only party not to sign up to the government's consensus for cuts and instead put forward a real costed alternative for economic recovery.

2. Sinn Féin would reverse cuts to public services and social welfare introduced in Budget 2011. We are the only party to clearly state that we would do this.

3. Unlike the other parties Sinn Féin would stand up to the IMF and EU. Sinn Féin is an Irish republican party. We are a United Ireland party. We believe in the sovereignty, independence and freedom of the Irish people and the right of our people to build our own society.

4. Every TD elected for Sinn Féin will mean a stronger voice for working families, the unemployed and all those struggling to survive. The more Sinn Féin TDs elected the louder the voice for those they represent in the Dáil.

5. Sinn Féin stands up for ordinary people. Over the last year it is our party, which confronted this government and demanded higher standards. For us, actions speak louder than words. Sinn Féin was the only party to oppose the Lisbon Treaty, pointing out the dangers for our sovereignty. Sinn Féin forced the government to hold the Donegal SW by-election, exposed the Taoiseach's contacts with leading people in Anglo, is the only party not to sign up to the Fianna Fáil / Green Party / Fine Gael / Labour consensus for cuts and instead put forward a real alternative for economic recovery. Sinn Féin TDs only take home the average industrial wage.

6. Sinn Féin will change politics and put an end to cronyism. Reform must start with the Dáil. That means cutting TD's wages and expenses. It means changing how the Dáil business is done so the Government can be held to account. We would abolish the Seanad in its current form

Ireland’s Austerity Woes

2011-02-09T21:59:00.001Z

BELOW IS A PIECE FROM TASC.

Ireland’s Austerity Woes
07/02/2011 By Nat OConnor
From the very beginning of the crisis, the Irish Government’s response has failed to protect vulnerable people and has damaged the long-term prospects of the economy.

To put the scale of Ireland’s austerity measures into context, about €30 billion worth of austerity measures (cuts to public spending and tax increases) have occurred since the crisis began at the end of 2008. In scale, these total just under a fifth of the current size of Ireland’s economy (GDP €160 billion). To apply the same level of austerity across the EU, with its GDP of €12.5 trillion, there would have to be €2.4 trillion worth of tax increases and spending cuts.

What is even worse is that Ireland is only half-way through the process. The last budget was the first of four agreed with the EU and IMF in order to secure loans to Ireland. What follows is a brief overview of events, and austerity measures adopted in response, for those who might not be familiar with the details of the Irish case.

Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on 15 September 2008. The Irish Government held a ‘midnight meeting’ on 29 September 2008, centred on Ireland’s banking crisis. Hence, Ireland’s financial and economic crisis dates from then, although other aspects of the crisis only emerged into broad public discourse in later months.

The discourse around the crisis centred on ‘external’ events from the outset. The problems in Ireland were blamed on the global financial crisis. However, it soon became apparent that Ireland would probably have suffered a recession sooner or later, even in the absence of international events; although some people denied this for quite some time. Ireland’s speculative property/construction bubble peaked just as Lehman Brothers fell. As a result, the coincidence of both national and international factors has led Ireland to experience a particularly severe and prolonged economic collapse.

The fiscal policies of the Government in the years leading up to 2008 were increasingly unsustainable. The construction bubble brought in much increased revenue from transaction taxes (e.g. stamp duty on property purchases, plus VAT from construction-related activities). Much of this tax revenue was from private debt invested in the construction market. In addition, income tax receipts were high and low unemployment reduced demand for welfare spending.

During the boom, the Government cut personal taxation and continued to permit high levels of tax relief to individuals and corporations, fatally undermining the stability of tax revenue. When the bubble burst, tax receipts fell by a third in two years. Up until this point, Ireland had been living a fantasy, where unsustainable tax receipts masking otherwise low taxation miraculously allowed the state to raise public spending and provide more services. When tax revenues collapsed, suddenly a massive current deficit appeared. One direct result is that the future size and role of the state is now at stake in Ireland. The balance of austerity measures between taxes and cuts will determine whether Ireland takes a route of low taxation (and therefore eviscerated public spending) or more public services (and therefore more European-average levels of taxation to pay for them).

On 30 September 2008, the day after their emergency midnight meeting, the Government announced a bank guarantee scheme, with the state guaranteeing €440 billion to six Irish banks, with the objective of safeguarding the Irish banking system. To put the scale of the guarantee into perspective, Ireland’s GDP in 2008 was €180 billion. Some prominent figures had called for a bank guarantee scheme, but the devil is in the detail. The guarantee was a blanket guarantee, which did not discriminate between banks of genuine systemic importance to the economy and others, which were not (notably Anglo Irish Bank, which was heavily involved in lending to the construction sector). It also covered more bondholders than should have been protected. Ultimately, it was a costly gamble that assumed liquidity was the only problem. However, it quickly came to light that the problem was not one of liquidity, but of solvency across the entire banking sector.

The Irish Government established NAMA (the National Assets Management Agency) in late 2009 to remove ‘bad loans’ from the balance sheets of Irish banks. However, NAMA was slow to start and has faced legal challenges to its powers. It was quickly overtaken by events. The lack of solvency in the Irish banks has forced the state to recapitalise them. This has led to the complete nationalisation of Anglo Irish Bank (known as ‘Anglo’) and more recently, the near-total state ownership of Allied Irish Bank (known as AIB). Perversely, NAMA continues to transfer loans from these state-owned banks to itself, a state-owned institution, costing unnecessary millions in legal and accountancy fees.

As a euro area member, Ireland has had no direct recourse to monetary policy. A range of monetary policy measures were taken by the European Central Bank in response to the crisis; however, these were insufficient compared to the scale of the problems Ireland was facing.

To date, the government has had four national budgets during the crisis period. (Details available on www.budget.gov.ie) The first budget, at the end of 2008, was two months early in order to respond to the emerging global financial crisis. Taxation was raised and public spending lowered. This budget did raise the level of unemployment payments, but subsequent budgets cut the rates and qualifying criteria for benefits to a greater degree than this budget raised them.

In the 2009 budget, the Government announced a policy of encouraging workers back in to employment by cutting their social welfare payments. Payments for young people (20-24) were set at special low rates. For all other cases, the rate was to be reduced where job offers or activation measures were refused. Further cuts and tax increases followed in the 2010 budget.

The fourth austerity budget, for 2011, again reduced social welfare payments. The national minimum wage was also reduced by nearly 12 per cent. Increases in personal tax in this budget have also disproportionately impacted on the low paid. Changes to rates and bands meant that an employee on €20,000 per year paid as much extra tax as an employee on €200,000. In addition, changes to social insurance created a new Universal Social Charge, which introduced much higher rates onto low- and middle-income employees than had previously been the case. And, of course, people on lower incomes are more reliant on the state services that are suffering cutbacks.

Unsurprisingly, consumer spending in the economy has collapsed and Ireland continues to experience negative growth in the domestic economy; GNP continues to fall. Unemployment is at 13.4 per cent and renewed high emigration masks a higher rate of job losses. The situation is better for GDP, which is growing again (albeit at low levels) due to strong performance by exporting firms.

The last budget was merely the first instalment in a four-year plan, which envisages further cuts and tax increases. Polling day in Ireland’s General Election is 25 February. The result will determine the extent and timing of further austerity measures, but one thing is sure: much more pain is yet to be inflicted on the Irish people. At the same time, the election provides an opportunity for the next government to change direction on economics: more can be done to increase investment and foster job creation, especially by indigenous companies; private bank debt can be separated from the sovereign national debt; and the conditions of the EU-IMF loans can be changed. Indeed, all of these things must happen if Ireland is to be realistically able to afford to repay the loans.

The resistance within some quarters in Ireland to such measures is perhaps more surprising to an outside observer than it is from within. Part of the solution to Ireland’s current insolvency is that many economic commentators and practitioners have to admit that our previous economic model was – and remains – seriously deficient. There is no going back to ‘business as usual’, but to accept this implies a great deal of cognitive dissonance for those who were the strongest supporters of the economic consensus that brought Ireland to ruin.

The Pipe - A state against its own

2011-02-09T17:04:00.001Z

If anyone is looking for a bit of down time from canvassing then a good show is on tonight.

The documentary 'The Pipe' is being shown tonight at 9.30 on TG4.

The Website for The Film.

Worth looking at I'd say.

Its Our Choice! Isn't it?

2011-02-01T15:55:00.000Z

Fine Gael and a increasingly unsure Labour Party are saying that any alternative to compliance with the terms of the IMF/EU deal is a reckless gamble. Vincent Brown (whether mischievously or otherwise) rounded on Eoin O Broin of Sinn Fein on the basis that burning the bondholders and the strategy that SF is advocating would see us unable to pay public servants, including the Gardaí, within a year or so. Scaremongering, in other words.

None of us have a crystal ball, but it seems to be that it is entirely reasonable to go back to the major European governments - the movers behind the deal - and outline in clear terms that we are not going to subject our people to this level of misery over a prolonged period and we are not going to be restricted in our ability to invest in job creation, if the democratic will of our people is to vote for parties that advocate this approach.

And there's the rub. Are we saying that advocating anything other than an agenda suitable to the IMF - a conservative and deregulated economic approach - like the one that facilitated the runaway banks for example-is tantamount to a reckless gamble? So that's it. Its the same political and economic approach or nothing. That's the real danger here and it needs to be challenged. The IMF and EU don't see Fine Gael challenging and, alas, Labour seem to be moving towards the continuation of this right wing agenda too, though I suspect that they are wobbling. I hope so

Its time to unite against a FG-FF political arrangement

2011-01-31T16:52:00.001Z

Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams has welcomed the decision by the Labour Party decision to seek a longer period for dealing with the deficit. Sinn Fein has argued from the outset for a six year period for reducing the deficit.

Mr. Adams speaking at the opening of the party's new campaign office in West Street, Drogheda this morning said:

"There is a widespread desire for a realignment of Irish politics. The prospect of a minority Fine Gael government supported by Fianna Fáil, as proposed by Micheál Martin, makes sense for the conservative parties. It also makes sense for progressive politics. It is time for all those who believe that a government without Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael can deliver a better Ireland – to work together.

"Voters want a real alternative. They are looking for change, for a break with the failed politics of the past and for hope that this is possible. A hundred years ago James Connolly appealed for unity among the left in Ireland. It made sense then. It makes sense today."

The Full Text of Gerry's remarks:

There is a growing demand for genuine change. Citizens know this is will not come from a Fine Gael led government.

They also know that the incoming government will frame the economic, social and political life of the state for the next 10, 20 or 30 years.

Voters are also calling on politicians to stop bickering and petty point scoring and present positive, concrete proposals for change.

Sinn Féin is seeking a mandate for:

· Root and branch political reform aimed at producing a genuinely open and accountable form of Government which ends the notion of political elites and empowers Irish citizens;

· The protection and creation of jobs;

· An end to the two-tier health and education systems;

· The proper use of Ireland's natural resources for the common good;

· Continued support for the Peace Process, and the Good Friday Agreement.

Sinn Féin has a plan to protect and invest in jobs and for a fair and sustainable tax system. Sinn Féin will renew our public services. And we believe that taxpayers' money must not be used to pay for private banking debt. Irish citizens cannot afford €80 billion of debt for the banks.

We want the reversal of the social welfare cuts and tax increases imposed on low and middle-income families.
We want a realistic deficit reduction plan that does not punish these same low and middle-income households. We want and end to EU/IMF austerity and interference.
Over the coming weeks we will be outlining in greater detail how Sinn Féin in government would set about undoing the damage done to our society and economy by 13 years of bad government.

A Fine Gael government will not deliver real change. They want to continue bailing out the banks, cutting social welfare and public services. They want to slash 30,000 public sector jobs and sell of profitable semi-state companies. They want to allow the EU & IMF to dictate government policy.
Real change can only be delivered by a new kind of government. Sinn Féin has long argued for realignment in politics. This process of realignment is something that has already begun in the North.

Imagine the type of change a government without Fianna Fail and Fine Gael could achieve.
That is now, for the first time, a real possibility. For too long we have changes of governments and a change in the faces in cabinet but no change in the policies they have implemented.There is a widespread desire for a realignment of Irish politics. The prospect of a minority Fine Gael government supported by Fianna Fáil, as proposed by Micheál Martin, makes sense for the conservative parties.

It also makes sense for progressive politics. It is time for all those who believe that a government without Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael can deliver a better Ireland – to work together.

Voters want a real alternative. They are looking for change, for a break with the failed politics of the past and for hope that this is possible.

A hundred years ago James Connolly appealed for unity among the left in Ireland. It made sense then. It makes sense today.

The Election - So Far

2011-01-25T13:00:00.002Z

Just a few days into this campaign, but a few observations arising out of it so far

Fine Gael are still getting away with presenting themselves as the ‘difference’. They have been able to sit there without feeling the need to present policy positions. Instead they are just hiding behind the notion that they are listening.

I don’t think that there has been enough reference to ideology so far. The progressive left may well be missing an opportunity to point out the inherent failings of the dominant political paradigm. The banks failed because there was insufficient democratic control over them. Fine Gael, like Fianna Fail, champion deregulation to free up business activity – or more accurately, to give undue advantage to the private sector. The public sector should be about democratic ownership and accountability, the removal of effective regulation leads to zero accountability. Fine Gael has been a subscriber to Irish Thatcherism every bit as much as Fianna Fail. The inherent failings of this approach are the root cause of our current financial difficulties and also the visible divisions that exists in society – the huge inequality.

Labour are struggling to distance themselves from the consensus for cuts. They are vulnerable on the question of supporting the finance bill and saying that their rationale is to move the election forward a few weeks is questionable. No more than FG, Labour are open to be nailed on the charge that they are happy to let this government take the hit for budgetary measures that they will shake their heads at but do nothing to change in post election period. Labour would also be very sensitive to the charge that they will be responsible for keeping Irish Thatcherism alive by supporting Fine Gael instead of using this opportunity to nail it now and build a new political and economic dispensation.

As I have said before, there is an opportunity to have an election campaign that serves to educate as much as wrest power. What seems clear from public responses on media shows like Liveline or The Frontline is that the anger and frustration is turned towards FF and individual bankers and bondholders. The link to a future government implementing the same ideological approach is missing. FG are getting away with it.

Enda Kenny reappears but still makes a fool of himself

2011-01-23T10:17:00.001Z

At a time of unprecedented politcal turmoil there is one political constant - Fine Gael. Steady as she goes, careful now, take it easy and dont change anything Fine Gael. In the current environment people believe that Fianna Fail are the architects of our misery. They are not however the sole designers of this deeply flawed state. Fine Gael has more than enthusiastically played its role in creating a state incapable of functioning or providing needed services to the Irish people, and more seriously it has failed to defend the interests of all of the people of Ireland against oppresion. To then find Mr. Enda Kenny, the man hiding god knows where, popping up at an Alliance party conference to give lectures to Sinn Fein is deeply frustrating.

And for wiser, more modern, FGers they must be deeply confused. Why is Fine Gael playing to its backwoods men - incidentally from the same genus as your typical Fianna Fail backwoods men a la FF TD Thomas Byrne commenting about Gerry Adams coming down to our country - why is FG making a fool of itself by talking about Sinn Fein when only half a cabinet is "running" the counry.

And for anyone who might doubt FG makes a fool of itself on this issue then watch the following. When the audience of the Late Late are laughing at you not with you then you should be twigging something is up:

Responding to those comments by Enda Kenny at the Alliance Party conference Mary Lou said:

“The fact is that Sinn Féin has no desire whatsoever to go into Government with Fine Gael. That party signed up to the ‘consensus for cuts’. They would further cut social welfare and would fire thousands of public sector workers.

“The simple facts are that Enda Kenny and Fine Gael have nothing to offer that is different to Fianna Fáil.

“Unlike Fine Gael Sinn Féin offers a clear alternative to the failed policies of the current government.

“Sinn Féin’s economic proposals would grow the economy – Fine Gael’s proposals would depress the economy and drive it further into recession.

“While Fine Gael supported the Lisbon treaty and previous treaties which have undermined Irish sovereignty Sinn Féin pointed out the implications of these treaties.We now see that Sinn Féin was right and Fine Gael was wrong.

“We won’t be taking any lectures from Enda Kenny on these issues.”

Amen to that.

Coalition Killing

2011-01-22T14:37:00.000Z

Definitively ruling a given party out of coalition is a tactic. It is a tactic designed to undermine credibility and to dissuade support.

In spite of the designed ambiguity of Sinn Féin' approach during the 2007 election on the matter of potential coalition with Fianna Fail, the latter used every opportunity to rule out such an arrangement. Fianna Fail's approach was designed to undermine SF and arguably it was a successful tactic in limiting the growth of a party that had been making inroads.

I believe that it was also true that regardless of the outcome, that FF - still heavily influenced, if not populated, with the PD's and fellow travellers, would not have accommodated SF in any event. The antipathy to SF among the political establishment of all hues should never be underestimated..

Of course, what isn't always given a fair hearing by the progressive left is that there wasn't an appetite among the SF grass roots for any coalition with FF. SF's postion was placed before the membership as tactical - that ruling out the option to participate in government in the south, while in 'government' in the 6 counties, would have been foolish. It would have flown in the face of realpolitik. I would have disagreed with that approach, but having had a fair argument, I would have been on the losing side in the debate. Fair enough.

Labour ruled out coalition with FF at that time. It probably served them well to do that, as they grew in the polls and could present themselves as principled. Where Labour completely fall down is in their willingness to coalesce with FG - a mirror image of FF and who advocate policies that would have led to exactly the same inequality and cronyism as we have seen.

Many people are watching Labour and Sinn Féin in terms of what both parties will say about Coalition with conservative and reactionary parties. Both parties can and should use the tactics employed by FF and FG in terms of ruling out coalition with right wingers. The credibility of a FG government would take a real hit if Labour looked to its progressive soul and sought alternative options. The prospect of wiping FF from the map would be given a huge boost by SF making it crystal clear that coalition with them is off the agenda.

There is enough fluidity out there for anything to happen.

The First Dail

2011-01-22T09:08:00.000Z

90 odd years ago an chead dail set out a vision for the southern state. It never got to see the light of day. What followed was 90 years of governance no more imaginative than parochial home rule. Fine Gale and Fianna Fail never heeded these words. These are the principles upon which the new Ireland must be built.

We declare in the words of the Irish Republican Proclamation the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies to be indefeasible, and in the language of our first President. Pádraíg Mac Phiarais, we declare that the Nation's sovereignty extends not only to all men and women of the Nation, but to all its material possessions, the Nation's soil and all its resources, all the wealth and all the wealth-producing processes within the Nation, and with him we reaffirm that all right to private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare.

We declare that we desire our country to be ruled in accordance with the principles of Liberty, Equality, and Justice for all, which alone can secure permanence of Government in the willing adhesion of the people.

We affirm the duty of every man and woman to give allegiance and service to the Commonwealth, and declare it is the duty of the Nation to assure that every citizen shall have opportunity to spend [23] his or her strength and faculties in the service of the people. In return for willing service, we, in the name of the Republic, declare the right of every citizen to an adequate share of the produce of the Nation's labour.

It shall be the first duty of the Government of the Republic to make provision for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of the children, to secure that no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing, or shelter, but that all shall be provided with the means and facilities requisite for their proper education and training as Citizens of a Free and Gaelic Ireland.

The Irish Republic fully realises the necessity of abolishing the present odious, degrading and foreign Poor Law System, substituting therefor a sympathetic native scheme for the care of the Nation's aged and infirm, who shall not be regarded as a burden, but rather entitled to the Nation's gratitude and consideration. Likewise it shall be the duty of the Republic to take such measures as will safeguard the health of the people and ensure the physical as well as the moral well-being of the Nation.

It shall be our duty to promote the development of the Nation's resources, to increase the productivity of its soil, to exploit its mineral deposits, peat bogs, and fisheries, its waterways and harbours, in the interests and for the benefit of the Irish people.

It shall be the duty of the Republic to adopt all measures necessary for the recreation and invigoration of our Industries, and to ensure their being developed on the most beneficial and progressive co-operative and industrial lines. With the adoption of an extensive Irish Consular Service, trade with foreign Nations shall be revived on terms of mutual advantage and goodwill, and while undertaking the organisation of the Nation's trade, import and export, it shall be the duty of the Republic to prevent the shipment from Ireland of food and other necessaries until the wants of the Irish people are fully satisfied and the future provided for.

It shall also devolve upon the National Government to seck co-operation of the Governments of other countries in determining a standard of Social and Industrial Legislation with a view to a general and lasting improvement in the conditions under which the working classes live and labour.

End of one chapter; beginning of another

2011-01-20T22:19:00.000Z

The election is finally called. After two of the most shameful years of prevarication and confusion in the face of one the deepest crisis ever faced by this country we now have the opportunity to end this sorry state of affairs. There is a common phrase in political circles about the voters waiting in the long grass. Well this time the voters wont be waiting in the long grass they will be standing in full sight and they fully intend to give the Fianna Fail cronies and gombeens a kicking.

But just as we are hopefully about to bring to an end a sorry chapter in Irish history we must think now about the next chapter. Sinn Fein will hopefully have a stronger presence in the next Leinster house so that it can acclerate even faster the process of breaking down this failed state and building a modern state in its place.

Looking ahead we must face the prospect of a power Fine Gael with Minister Varadkar and Hayes all backed with a strong Labour party settling in for a few years of power and ministerial baubles.

What will have changed? Nothing! FG and Labour agreed with Fianna Fail so much they went in and had budget consensus talks. They failed to even question the policy of 3% deficit target until given permission by the IMF. The fully backed the FF policy of deflation and dis-investment through austerity.

The only way to change is to now make a political step-change. To build a real opposition in south Ireland. With Fine Gael and Labour in govt. and FF broken on the margins the only way to build a real oppositoin is to vote Sinn Fein. We've proven that with 5 TDs we can make a difference and put the govt. under severe pressure.

After 10 years of closed-minded autocratic rule we dont need a FG-Labour super majority.

Put 10, 15 or 20 Sinn Fein TDs in their and that will be a break from the past and a new chapter in Irish politics. Sinn Fein will provide real opposition to a too powerful FG-Labour govt.

Its time to write a new chapter in Irish history. Tá an lá ag teacht.

Shankill Road

2011-01-14T17:54:00.000Z

An interesting piece in An Phoblacht about how Sinn Fein is building a vote amongst loyalist communities.

VOTERS in staunch loyalist areas such as the Shankill Road are switching to Sinn Féin because republicans are seen to be active for working-class communities, unionist and nationalist, senior UDA members have told the unionist daily, the News Letter.

UDA leader Jackie McDonald explained that the switch to Sinn Féin is happening because unionist politicians have abandoned their working-class support.

Former UDA prisoner Colin Halliday said:

It wasn’t big numbers but there were votes from loyalist areas went into the box for Sinn Féin.

What we’re taking from that is that voters believe, ‘These people are doing the work for us. We’re being neglected by our own politicians.’

He said the DUP and UUP are ignoring the people of unionist working-class areas:

The days of putting a rosette on a donkey and parading it through unionist areas are over.
The UDA-linked Ulster Political Research Group will be contesting the council elections in May.

Shine a Light on Fine Gael

2011-01-01T13:40:00.002Z

Received this piece from Vincent Woodwood who has an excellent site at http://vincentjwood.blogspot.com that is well worth a read.

Shine a Light on Fine Gael

One of the clear objectives for people who want to see far reaching progressive change is to work towards the best possible government from the next election.

It is a given that Fianna Fail won’t form part of that government. Nobody would touch them. Even if the figures added up and it was technically possible to form a government between Fianna Fail and Labour, it was long ago ruled out by Labour. That, as it turned out, was a smart move for them to make at time. Support rose for the party, as people drew the conclusion that principle lay behind the decision. It was also very astute. Labour saw that there was a sizable and expanding progressive electorate out there. The decision to create clear distance between them and Fianna Fail was calculated to increase their political strength.

The bookies favourite is for a coalition between Fine Gael and Labour. Labour are going along with this perception. In the immediate aftermath of the fallout from the collapse in the banking system and the run up to the last budget, the public mood has been swayed towards looking for the quickest and most effective way of consigning the current government to history. Therefore, there has been a boost to both parties poll ratings. The boost to Labours ratings can be explained in two ways. In the first instance, they have been presented as the most obvious partner to Fine Gael. They have been in government together before and in does not stretch the imagination to put them in a partnership again.

The other factor is that one connected to Labour’s decision to rule out Fianna Fail and to take off the gloves in attacking the main governing party inside at outside Leinster House.

The rise in the Fine Gael vote I think also falls into two main areas. As the largest opposition party, they are seen as the most likely to replace Fianna Fail and in simple terms, they are the quickest and easiest way to punish the incumbents. There are also a safe home for conservative minded voters and those who want to maintain the political and economic system pretty much as it is. If Fianna Fail are removed together with all of the negative baggage they carry, then a new administration with a different cast of characters can take over without having to change the overall way in which the economy is run.

The ideology and policy platform of Fine Gael is indistinguishable in any meaningful way from Fianna Fail. They both believe in deregulated and privatised provision of public services. They both want to roll back the state. They are both conservative parties. That needs saying and repeating at every opportunity.

There are a group of people who I believe are thinking about their politics. People have been exposed to a one-size fits all ‘choice’ between two conservative parties and a largely compliant media who have dismissed any variation in policy positions or any fresh thinking that may challenge what had become economic orthodoxy. The collapse in the banking system and the light that this has shone on the weaknesses of this capitalist open economy has stirred enough debate to at least open minds towards alternatives.

That these people may feel that their best option would be to vote for Fine Gael in order to sufficiently change the order, has to be a major concern to all who want to see real progressive change. It also poses a challenge.

There are two elements to that challenge. The first is to convince this group that a vote for Fine Gael would not change anything. Fine Gael need to be challenged on their policy platform and on their ‘vision’. What do they want to see in 5 or 10 years time. They are open to attack on there plans for the public sector and the increased role for the private sector.

The other way that people could be discouraged from voting for Fine Gael is to ensure that the party that would have to support them in any new government, Labour, moved away from that position.

That is an enormous challenge. All current indications are that the leadership of the Labour party are gearing up for government with Fine Gael. It’s the easiest option for them. There are also conservative elements within the Labour party who would feel comfortable with this type of coalition. However, there are many within the Labour party and the wider Labour and Trade Union Movement who can see the opportunity for much wider and more radical change in the current climate. They can see that this is one of those moments in history when real change can be effected. They too can see that the political and social landscape can be radically changed and that we are on the verge of being able to consign the neo-liberal domination of the past few decades to history.

The Labour party have an opportunity to contribute to the atmosphere of change. They can join with others to put a different type of vision before the people. One that shifts the political paradigm. In doing so, they would be playing a significant part in influencing that group of electors who mistakenly believe that Fine Gael can be a lead actor in creating a better society.

Conservative people will stay with Fine Gael and whatever remains of Fianna Fail. Progressive forces can then work together to forge ahead with putting a people-centred vision before the electorate.

Brilliant Pearse - Now Marty don't fail us now

2010-12-11T11:44:00.007Z

Peasrse Doherty made a brilliant speech in response to the budget and many more people in the South are now seeing Sinn Féin as a genuine alternative to the main parties.

Sinn Féin is seen to be fighting for the poor, disadvantaged and marginalised people of this country. Sinn Féin is seen to be offering a modern ecomic alternative to the market based policies that created the current world economic crisis. Sinn Féin is seen to be taking on the priviliged groups in this country and refusing to allow an economic elite to get away with making the working class pay for the mess we are in.

However, in the North Sinn Féin is in a postion of power and is being told by London to make budget cuts of 4 Billion pounds. If Sinn Féin agrees to implementing cuts of this nature, then what the hell are we doing down the South. We cannot oppose cuts in the South and implement them in the North. If we do we will loose all crediblility with the Irish people, and what is worse is that we will be seen as liars.

Sinn Féin must fight for working people North and South and it must refuse to implement the cuts in the Six counties.

Below is Pearse's speech and he outlines for me the direction Sinn Féin must go throughut the island.

Irish Citizen's News : FG & Labour "knowledge economy"

2010-12-09T12:41:00.000Z

Irish Citizen's News is a punchy news blog providing short news stories and insights into current affairs. Worth bookmarking.

FG and Labour refuse to reverse cuts to students grants

Last night, the "government in waiting", Fine Gael and Labour could not make a promise to strickened students to reverse the cuts to their grants.

The Union of Students in Ireland is furious over the change which it claims will force many to drop out of college.

Anger is mounting over drastic cuts in grants for 25,000 students who will lose €1,700 each on average from next September.

The students will be forced onto lower grants because they live less than 45km from college.

Until now they got the higher 'non-adjacent' grant which kicked in at 24km from college.

Fighting RTE censorship - making an official complaint

2010-12-07T21:13:00.000Z

I came across a few things on Facebook about complaining over RTE bias and today I saw some more material and folks talking about the same so here is an overview of the process. If you dont like RTE bias or other media sources' treatment of Sinn Fein then politely and firmly challenge them. Use the mechanisms in place and within which they must react to put pressure on them. Who knows a multiple of favourable jdgements and things could change very quickly. Everyone can play their part.

Hope this helps some of you get complaints about RTE impartialty and force them to treat SF fairly.

For Broadcasters the relevant body is the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland

Complaining to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland:

(1) http://www.bai.ie/broadcasting_complaints.html

Information on their site about the complaints process

The Complaint Form to use

I would suspect the categories objectivity; impartiality in news , and fairness and objectivity, impartiality in current affairs would be the main ones relevant here.

Once you identify a broadcast that you believes infringes one of the above then you have under 30 days from the date of broadcast to submit your complaint.

(2) http://www.bai.ie/broadcasting_complaints_complaintprocess.html

When you complete the form it can be mailed, faxed or emailed.

Your must inform the BAI of the name of the programme/advertisement, station, date & time of the broadcast and what legislative requirement/code you feel the broadcaster has not adhered to

The Station name is like : RTE One.

The legislative requirement would be: Broadcasting Act 2009, section 48 (1)(a)(fairness, objectivity and impartiality in current affairs)

Programme name, date and time would be unique of course but make sure you use the correct name, date and time.
Seeing as how its impartiality thats the issue then that seems the best to use. Scroll down to the bottom to see some of the relevant legislation. Full link here - Irish broadcasting act

The specific point on which most complaints related to bias or impartiality against SF would be relate to F, O and I. In the making of any complaint it may be useful to repeat the language used by the BAI - they will have a language they use when assessing complaints and phrasing it using their language should be of benefit.

From the BAI.ie it states : Fairness, Objectivity and Impartiality: There is a requirement that all news broadcast by a broadcaster is reported and presented in an objective and impartial manner and without any expression of the broadcaster’s own views. In the treatment of current affairs, including matters which are either of public controversy, or the subject of current public debate, broadcasters must ensure that they are fair to all interests concerned and that the broadcast material is presented in an objective and impartial manner and without any expression of the broadcaster’s own views

That paragraph is effectively the rules within which your complaint will be considered. In order to have a successful complaint then you would need to point out how the broadcaster failed in one of those criteria.

The BAI in turn will evaluate the complaint see and the programme to determine that "every reasonable effort to present a range of significant viewpoints to the matters under discussion and be fair to all interests concerned" has been made. Again a statement within your complaint that it was your belief that broadcaster x on programme Y did not make reasonable efffort to present different view points/ establish impartiality/etc would help to place your complaint within a suitable framework.

The BAI committee may choose to either fully accept, partialy accept or reject your complaint once it gets to the end process so it may be worthwhile specifiying a number of elements to your complaint as done in this example. These case records would prove useful templates for preparing a complaint

It would also seem to be a good idea that the segments of the programme which your complaint is centered around is referenced in your complaint i.e at 14:36 into the show the presenter said ...
This approach would help focus the committee's evaluation to certain areas which they should treat. The whole show though should still remain an element of a complaint as otherwise it may be they will reject the stated instances and a good case might be lost.

what hapens when you make a complaint: It will get sent to RTE who will have to reply .

Their response can either be accepted or rejected by the person making the complaint i.e you. In order for your complaint to go to the BAI's excutive complaint forum then you would have to write to the BAI and confirm you are unhappy at the broadcasters response. Once thats done they will analyse your case seriously, discuss it and determine whether they will formally make a judgement against the broadcaster in question. In order to make an impact on the broadcasting policy of RTE a successful formal judgement , or a series of such judgements would be needed meaning that rejecting the broadcasters response in order to achieve a formal review of your complaint would appear the best way to ensure RTE abandoned its biased policy.

as per the BAI.ie :
Initial consideration: if you are not happy with the response to your complaint, you can inform the BAI and your complaint will be given initial consideration by the BAI's Executive Complaint Forum. In this regard, all written material on file, together with the relevant recording of the broadcast will be considered in a collagaite manner by the Forum. If the Forum determines that the issues as raise by you are not borne out by the broadcasting content, the complaint will be considered resolved. If the Forum decides that there are complaint issues borne out by the broadcasting content which require further consideration, the complaint will be referred to the Compliance Committee for assessment.

Compliance Committee: In assessing a complaint, the Authority considers all written material on file together with the relevant broadcast material. The issues are discussed in a collegiate manner at a meeting of the Compliance Committee. If the Committee agrees with the complaint, it will be upheld. If the Committee disagrees, the complaint will be rejected.

A copy of the decision will be sent to the complainant and the broadcaster before its publication

The legislation also provides that broadcasters must broadcast decisions of the Compliance Committee where a complaint has been fully or partially upheld. Broadcasts of this nature must be made within 21 days of the Compliance Committee issuing its decision

48 a

) a complaint that in broadcasting news given by it and specified in the complaint, a broadcaster did not comply with one or more of the requirements of section 39(1)(a) and (b) (

b ) a complaint that in broadcasting a programme specified in the complaint, a broadcaster either did not comply with one or more of these requirements or was in breach of the prohibition contained in section 39(1)(d)

(
C ) a complaint that on an occasion specified in the complaint, there was an encroachment by a broadcaster contrary to section 39(1)(e)
d ) a complaint that on an occasion specified in the complaint,

a broadcaster failed to comply with a provision of a broadcasting code providing for the matters referred to
in section 42(2)(a) to (d) and section 42(2)(f), (g) and (h)

(2) A complaint under subsection (1) shall be in writing and be
made to the Compliance Committee not more than 30 days after—
a ) in case the complaint relates to one broadcast, the date of the broadcast,(

b ) in the case of 2 or more unrelated broadcasts, the date of the earlier or earliest, as the case may be, of those broadcasts, or
(
c

) in case the complaint relates to 2 or more related broadcasts of which at least 2 are made on different dates, the later or latest of those dates.

(3) The Compliance Committee may, at their discretion, refer the complaint in the first instance to the broadcaster, for consideration in accordance with a code of practice prepared under
section 47(3)
Section 39:

a

) all news broadcast by the broadcaster is reported and

presented in an objective and impartial manner and without

any expression of the broadcaster’s own views,

(
b

) the broadcast treatment of current affairs, including

matters which are either of public controversy or the subject

of current public debate, is fair to all interests concerned

and that the broadcast matter is presented in an

objective and impartial manner and without any

expression of his or her own views, except that should it

prove impracticable in relation to a single broadcast to

apply this paragraph, two or more related broadcasts may

be considered as a whole, if the broadcasts are transmitted

within a reasonable period of each other,

NOW MORE THAN EVER WE MUST FIGHT TO DEFEND OUR NEUTRALITY AND INDEPENDENCE.

2010-11-30T20:04:00.003Z

AGM OF THE PEACE AND NEUTRAILTY ALLIANCE (PANA)

Roger Cole, Chair of PANA said:

"PANA is really only an idea, as with an annual income of less than €10,000, what else could it be. The idea is that Ireland should be a United Independent Democratic Republic with its own Independent Foreign Policy with neutrality at its heart."

It is an idea that originated in 1790 with Wolfe Tone. Throughout the 19th and early 20th century the Irish political elite gave their allegiance to the British Union and its imperial wars until the 1916 Rising broke their power over the Irish people. It took some time before the Irish imperialists regrouped and the Fianna Fail/Fine Gael/Labour elite gave their allegiance the European Union and its Battle Groups. However, as between 50,000-100,000 Irish people cheered on Saturday 27 as once more the 1916 Proclamation was read outside the GPO, as a clear majority of the people in the Donegal by-election voted for supporters of the Proclamation, we can realistically ask, has the time for that idea come again? As Admiral Mullen, Chair of the US military Joint Chiefs of Staff and the real boss of the US/EU/NATO military axis states war with Iran is being considered, will the Irish political elite be able to sustain their power over the Irish people as they are drag! ged not only into mass poverty but yet another war? PANA has resisted these Irish imperialists since our foundation. We are part of a tradition that has resisted imperialism for 220 years. We shall never surrender."

The PANA AGM will be held in the Ireland Institute, 27 Pearse Street, Dublin 2 on Saturday December 4 from 11.30am-1.00pm with reports from the Chair, Secretary, Treasurer and International Secretary followed by elections. There will then be a public meeting with Alan Mackinnon, Chair of Scottish CND,
Jill Gough, National Secretary of CND Cymru and David Hutchinson Edgar, Chair of Irish CND

Roger Cole
Chair
Peace & Neutrality Alliance
www.pana.ie

Government has negotiated a terrible deal

2010-11-28T20:46:00.001Z

In an initial response this evening to the details of the EU/IMF bailout, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams said:

“The government has negotiated a terrible deal.

"The 5.8% interest rate is unaffordable. The decision to force the state to take €17.5 billion out of the Pensions Reserve Fund to pour into black hole that is our banking system is a disaster.

“Sinn Féin had proposed €7 billion be taken from the Pension Reserve Fund for a jobs stimulus programme. The Government refused to do this. But now they are prepared to rob the pension fund to give a digout to the bankers.

“The decision to protect bondholders is disgraceful.
“The banks are getting another €15 billion while simultaneously €15 billion is being taken out the economy- out of people’s pockets.
“The costs of this deal to ordinary people will be deep and will result in hugely damaging cuts to public services, social welfare and wages.”

The Republic has not fallen.

2010-11-21T12:32:00.000Z

If ever there was a proof required that the govt. in Dublin was not capable of defending, encouraging and bringing to full fruition the Irish Republic then the last week was full testament to how they have failed once again. There have been many witty uses of the proclamation text over the last week or so. The Irish Left Review and the Irish examiner both have examples which skilfully set the destructive arrogance of the Fianna Fail govt. in stark contrast against the selflessness and vision of the founders of this Republic. Further commentators have noted that the Republic is dead, disestablished in 2010, last Thursday to be exact. Typically we hear that the patriot dead of the rising and tan war would be spinning in their graves.

The sentiment is understandable. The southern state has suffered a very serious loss of control over its own fate. Its laudable that people are going back to the well - to the proclamation which is not just a historical document but alongside the programme of the first dail effectively the constituting document of the Republic that was founded in 1916.

The anger of people who believe that for all purposes the Republic has fallen due to the actions of the Fianna Fail govt is understandable. Yet its mistaken so far as it believes that the Irish Republic is Fianna Fail's or the Dublin Govt's to destroy.

One version of the oath of the Irish Republican Brotherhood had its members "swear allegiance to the Irish Republic, now virtually established". A republic established in principle in the 1860s and in reality in 1916 is not and never will be Fianna Fail's to destroy.

Which raises the question then of how the men of 1916 would view this. From their own words and their proclamation we know what there vision for Ireland was.

Did they envisage a 'Republic' whose governing class would welcome emigration twice in the space of three decades?

Did they envisage a 'Republic' where you are scared when your relative goes to hospital because it will probably kill them rather than save them?

Did they envisage a 'Republic' where the wealth of a generation was squandered to the defend the interests of a well heeled ascendancy, a native aristocracy of gombeens and arrogant crooks whose interest lays in their own land developer class over the mere Irish.

Did they envisage a 'Republic' which ignored the apartheid statelet's discriminaton to the north?

Connolly who was shot unconscious in a chair hardly would be happy to see an 80 year old woman in Sligo hosptial suffering from Lung cancer being slapped into a chair for the night.

The men of 1916 didnt die to establish Irish sovereignty alone. Each of them had a vision whether it be cultural (which the state is failing), educational (which the state is failing), social equality ( which the state is failing) etc etc.

If the men of 1916 where spinning in their graves last Thursday then they have been doing it for decades.

Last Thursday was a new low, another step away from the Republic, not marking the end of the Republic, but maybe marking the realisation for may people that the so called republic was not a republic and has not been for decades. What was called the 'republic' was an oligarchy geared to the benefit of the few and failing at practically every task it turned its hand to whether that be the development of robust and functioning institutions, a stable economy, a revival of our national language or maintaing fiscal control.

So has the Republic fallen. No it has not. Its still there. The task is the same task it has been for a while now - to dismantle the oligarchical states and replace them with a functioning republic.

The 6 county orange state has been broken down and is being destroyed more and more and now the Fianna Fail state has destroyed itself.

But the Republic still exists and maybe today with the prospect of the end of the gombeen state built by Fianna Fail and tolerated by Fine Gael the men of 1916 are spinning a bit slower in their graves

TIME FOR CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS NOW

2010-11-20T14:18:00.000Z

TEEU delegates have voted in favour of a campaign of civil disobedience if the Government does not call a General Election.

The emergency motion was passed by an overwhelming majority at the biennial conference of the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union in Galway this morning.
It condemned the Government for what it describes as 'negligence in the management of the economy'.

The union's General Secretary, Eamon Devoy, told delegates that he believes Ireland is on the brink of significant civil unrest.
He attacked the Government's plan to take €6 billion out of the economy in the next Budget.

'When the draconian measures being proposed are heaped on top of the €14.5 Billion cuts already implemented in the last three brutal budgets, life in Ireland will be unbearable', he said.

ICTU General Secretary David Begg accused banks of 'lying through their teeth to NAMA about the value of their loan books.

He told delegates that the Government guarantee to the banking bond holders was 'a terrible mistake' and the trade union movement would not 'acquiesce in the ruination of our society'.

Mr Begg said Congress was calling for a mass mobilisation on 27 November to 'allow ordinary working people to voice their opposition to a policy that could destroy 90,000 more jobs in the short term and any prospect of long term prosperity.'

Peace and Neutrality Alliance Annual Conference

2010-11-13T08:42:00.002Z

Peace & Neutrality Alliance Annual Conference

The Annual Conference of the Peace & Neutrality Alliance will be held on Saturday December 4 in the Ireland Institute, 27 Pearse Street, Dublin 2. It will start at 11.30am with reports from the Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, International Secretary and resolutions followed by the elections to the NEC. It is open to the public, but only paid up members can vote.
The second session will be a public meeting commencing at 2.30pm. Speakers are John Macinnon, National Secretary of Scottish CND, Jill Gough, National Secretary of CND Cymru and David Hutchinson Edgar, Chair of Irish CND.

I hope everybody interested in learning more about these three peace movements attend.

Since 1996 PANA has worked to build a broad alliance throughout Ireland to oppose the neo-liberal militarist ideology that offers the people of this country nothing but war and mass poverty. While we have won some major victories, in particular the winning of the first referendums on the Nice and Lisbon treaties the Irish corporate media and all the mainstream political parties have continued to support their wars and their neo-liberal economics.
However the desire of the leadership of Fianna Fail/Fine Gael/Labour Party to continue to support the use of Shannon airport by US troops, the acceleration of the process of the militarisation of the EU and massive cuts in a four year period will absolutely inevitably mean a total transformation of Irish politics. This will however will not necessarily be a "good thing". When Obama got elected with the help of the peace movement in the US he ignored them and did the exact opposite by escalating the war and maintaining then neo-liberal economic ideology. By opposing change, Obama has opened the way for the US Republicans that offer the same but even more of it. In Ireland those that appear to offer change like TASC and Claiming our Future deliberately make no mention of Irish participation in the Imperial Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Pakistan or the militarisation of the EU. But there can be no option for social justice in Ireland or elsewhere wh! ile supporting Imperial wars. It is the job of PANA not just to attack the blood soaked warmongers in Fianna Fail but ensure at every stage that opposition to Irish involvement in these horrific wars be an integral part of the emerging political alternative. Neither can this process be achieved in isolation which is why we have invited speakers from Scotland and Wales, taking part in the NO to WAR NO to NATO conference and have continued to build stronger links with other peace groups in the US and other countries. Let there be no mistake. As war and poverty grows, so will the resistance. They will be defeated.

Roger Cole
Chair
Peace & Neutrality Alliance
www.pana.ie

THE RISE AND RETURN

2010-11-11T22:14:00.004Z

Below is a piece received from "The Guarantor" on our failure to break through in national opinion polls.

The Rise And Return

Well that is that then ,we are through, them opinion polls say so and the old order of things believe it and crows. Should we believe their words? Hell no.

I for one chooses to ignore them. Opinion polls ha. Do not take them seriously, they insult our intelligence. Pay no attention to them cause it was cooked up by individuals who failed Leaving Cert Maths.

Let us face facts here, we have bitter enemies so called nationalists, unionists and every journalistic hack in the comics wants a piece. I know, you as well as I have long memories. I remember the venom spread about us, the utter trash they came out with about the Republican movement.

So what is our response? Wring our hands in despair? Whinge? Write poison pen letters to the tabloids? Give up? Nah not us. Such is below our dignity, our character. The answer to them all is this we aren’t through with yet. Speaking of their venom reminds me of a poem by A.E.Housman in A Shropshire Lad.

About King Mithridates how he made himself immune to the venom’s in nature.

‘And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up;
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt;
Them it was their poison hurt.’

They who zealously pursue our destruction have written our obituary prematurely.

Why do they hate us?

Why do they attack us so?

Self interest and fear. It is so because we are power, a wind of change, we have a point, we are on to something here….. We have an idea: A republic. They fear us cause we will succeed.

In our history as republicans in struggle we have remained ,and will remain, steadfast to the idea of a free independent Ireland. All other ideas of ours will change, alter and adapt cause they must. Our core identity, our core belief, will be unaltered standing the test of time - a republic. Heh, if Plato can 2500 years ago says it’s the most perfect form of government available. I tend to agree.

Polybius said ‘Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than before.’

Pessimism and defeatism are the bane of this nation. Micko organised a massive bluff and fooled the Empire and liberated for us 26 counties. It was some game they played in the face of such division at home.

Read Michael Flanagan’s Presidential Address ‘The Strength of Sinn Féin’ to see why I draw such a conclusion. And if the Irish race could stand against such adversity divided, what could we achieve together united?

After Collins and the lads hard fought battle during the Tan War, what happened in the intervening 80 odd years? We know well there were those who quit at that and went no further, resting on their laurels.

As Polybius said.
This is the mark Sinn Féin make we are relentless, unceasing that is the true difference between us Republicans and the middlemen of the Gombeens nation. The people of the Republic will always need Sinn Féin.

So take heart, Things for us are not so bad for us as portrayed.

The gombeens have gifted this island with a 3 fold curse, partition, emigration and debt. Such I call Clan Breaga. And us we have the youth of this country and our hard work, our graft. What are we to do? Wait? No, we are not Labour, who crucially for themselves must decide who they will stand with. To do James Connolly proud, us and Clan Séan Bean Vocht or the middlemen of Clan Breaga.

Today’s our day, if Ireland is to rise anew reborn it is republicans must lead as always. It must be now not some far flung distant date sometime in the future.

The first test of our strength and the republic’s soon November 25th.

Donegal South West. A by election. The FF/Green cabal hell bent to subvert the democratic principles of government to cling on to power for just a wee while longer.

I ask of the voters of this constituency elderly and middle aged accustomed to vote in tribal fashion for FF or FG. Why? Cause of loyalty to what your daddies and granddaddies done? I do not question the brave sacrifice of those individuals but I question rather was this sorry FF/FG axis of power what they fought for. Look at the unemployed, yourselves, your sons and daughters.

Finally to the youth of this constituency , the students, and the emigrants return home to the hills of Donegal. Drop everything cancel everything, nought else matters.

Travel up, return home. Make your plans revolve round this moment. More of the same or something else.

This is your future in an instant.

There is only one man to thank Senator Pearse Doherty, thank only one party,
Sinn Féin, for this opportunity to stand up for Donegal, and indeed for the national interest. Your vote you can bring a government to its knees, to its end. You can alter the fate of this island. Its destiny. Sink it to new lows or raise it up from the mire. Build the republic as it was envisioned. Let the world say of Ireland A people that said enough and no further. Let Ireland say ‘Here stands a Republic our Republic!’

Old Ireland has throughout its history has the gombeen as its enemy.
So do what you can do what you are able.
Write thesis to educate so that you may be free,
Demonstrate to show your opposition so others may be inspired;
Canvass to gain support so that you will be an example
Join Sinn Féin and Vote Sinn Féin
Suas agus troid an naisiun gombeen!

And may our endeavor prove: The Rise And Return

You makes your bet and takes your chances - facing the bondholders and special interests down

2010-11-04T17:56:00.000Z

Sinn Féin versus the Bank Bail Out. Rathangan SF blog discusses the Irish banking crisis, the Sinn Fein reponse and the failures of the FF strategy. To see how far Fianna Fail's approach is from reality

you could look at the Financial Times editorial of 01st November which looked on in amazement at the insane strategy followed by Dublin. Even the right wing think FF have lost the plot. Its time to stand upto the bank debt bondholders. If we dont then the economy will likely be crippled.

A few short months ago this blog was both shocked and saddened to read an American headline entitled, "The bank that brought down a nation". Prehaps that wasnt the exact wording, but it was a clear meaning. The Americans, and the rest of the world, were watching in amazement as the Irish government chose covering subordinated bond holders tied to their nations failed banks, over the welfare of its own citizens. The rest of the world were watching our government ignore convention in promising to make Irelands citizens pay for the banking crisis, which they clearly were not responsible for and could only pay for at the expense of their whole way of life.

The recapitalisation of our banks is expected to cost in the range of €45 billion to €50 billion. Over €30 billion is already wrote off to loss in Anglo and Irish Nationwide. Sinn Féin believes that there will be a minimal if not zero return on the funds committed to recapitalising the remaining institutions. The cost of NAMA is not included in these figures. In the worst case scenario, NAMA will cost the Irish taxpayer €40 billion, while the very best scenario still sees the Irish taxpayer €1 billion down.

Sinn Féin believes rather than standing up for the bank bondholders, our government needs to stand up for the Irish people and the future of our economy. If additional billions can always be found for the banks, money can be found for our recovery. The Fianna Fail/Green coalition has it backwards; banks follow the economy; they do not lead it: fix the economy and you fix the banks as well as fix the future.

Certain opposition parties who seem unable to come up with their own progressive economic proposals are spending their time attacking Sinn Féin over our original stance on the bank bail out two years ago. It is true that Sinn Féin supported the original motion, as the guarantee appeared to be a measure to stabilise the entire banking sector which was about to collapse and the party agreed to support it only with the provision of proper terms and conditions. Sinn Féin, along with the rest of the nation were misled on the facts, and when we learned that the terms and conditions provided were inadequate, we voted against it and have done so ever since.

Let no one blur the truth, Sinn Féin is one hundred percent against the bank bail out, and find the fact that the government has refused to reveal the identities of the bond holders to the Irish people, who are bankrolling their get out of jail free card, disgusting. Roman Abramovic recently outed himself as a bond holder and had the cheek to threaten to sue the Irish state if it defaulted on any part of his bond. The fact is, Abramovic invested in a high risk bond with the bank. As the caveat under every financial institution reads - Caution: the value of your investment can go down as well as up.

Sinn Féin believes that the Anglo bondholders must take the hit of their bad investment and the good deposits in the bank must be moved to the now nationalised AIB, which must become a state bank. The banking guarantee as it stands should be abolished immediately, leaving just a depositors guarantee in place.

Sinn Féin refuses to take part in the consensus pretending that the bank bail out and its effects are somehow separate from the rest of the economy, and have no impact on government finances. The bank bail out has heightened the effects of our recession, made recovery much more difficult and left us as a state on our knees before the EU and the IMF. Our international reputation is ruined and despite what Brian Cowen thinks, allowing Irelands citizens and infrastructure to decay in order to save bondsmen will not appeal us to multinational investment. You cannot separate the bank bail out and our government finances, the international markets certainly wont. In reality, the bank bail out places our true deficit in excess of 32%, a truly horrifying figure.

Remember this when the Minister for Finance slashes your social welfare, old age pension, disability payments or single mothers benefits on December the seventh. Remember this when your local hospital loses its A&E, when your local rail line is closed or when your kids cant afford to continue college due to rising fees. This budget has nothing to do deficit reduction. Every cent that is cut from frontline services, welfare benefits and general public spending next year will be redirected at least ten times into our governments bank bail out. You can stop them, but time is running out. It beyond time for the Irish people to pull the rug from under these people, once and for all.

Countries with Death Wishes. David McWilliams questions austerity machismo

2010-11-02T10:59:00.001Z

David McWilliams wrote a very good piece which effectively demonstrates why the neo-liberal reaganite model is such a failure. Such a model assumes that the interests of business and state are always aligned and the state benefits incidentally as long as business is booming. The more business booms the more the state will boom. Unfortunately it does not work like that does it. The interests of the state (and more accurately the nation) are frequently similar to those of business but most definitely superior to them. Thats where Linehan and company have gotten so lost. They still think that as long as you are slavishly acting in the interests of businesses, property holders or debt holders then somehow that raises the state's boat as well (with a few bob won on the horses as well of course) . Naive men and women blinded by ideology (and personal greed) who are incapable of performing the jobs they hold and as a result need men like Suds and Seanie to tell them how to proceed.

David McWilliams:

I am writing this article from a ''ghost hotel'' in Leinster. Rumour has it that the business was recently sold for €1, but the hotel itself is probably in Nama.

It will never be worth what it was built for. Today, as well as owning a small part of this hotel, I am the only guest in it. The reason I know this is that, when I asked about the lack of hot water, the very charming hotel manager said that I'd have to run the water for a bit as there was no other hot water being used in the whole hotel.

There were no other guests. The hotel has more than 90 rooms. This is reality in Ireland, and this reality needs to be defined and accepted. The reality is that bank lending is falling, prices in most sectors are falling, lending to residential housing is falling and the economy is in the grips of a credit crunch. People have too much debt and don't want to borrow, and the banks have too much bad debt and don't want to lend.

Against this background, the people who run the country make announcements about ''front loading'' budget cuts as if budget cuts are some sort of clean arithmetic, which has no impact on the economics. This is not arithmetic, it is economics and, in economics, everything is related.

On paper, arithmetic can look clean and incisive, but in reality it affects jobs and people's decisions to spend. It means nights in a ghost hotel and wages for hotel managers, it means Christmas parties and Christmas presents, it means investments in machinery and the difference between some hope and no hope.

Those who best understand the difference between simple arithmetic and complex economics are the financial markets.

Investors want to invest in an economy which has the prospect of growth. If they see that a country is being turned into a large debt-servicing machine, they will pass. If they see that the people who run the state on behalf of the citizens are little more than despised debt collectors for owners of capital, the financial markets will take flight.

Read the full article: Death Wish Economics

Just Like That.

2010-11-01T14:42:00.002Z

How do you get rid of €1.8 billion just like that? Well you dont get goofball comedian Tommy Cooper. Instead you get a goofball finance minister and hey presto the National Pensions Reserve Fund is down by €1.8 billion. The Sinn Fein budget proposals calls for a multi-year investment strategy to reflate the economy using money from the National Pension Reserve Fund. Can anyone seriously tell me that throwing away €1.8 billion in a flash is a better option than using the money to invest in the economy. Yet against all common sense I am sure the Govt. will say it.

As noted on the NamaWineLake blog and taken up again on IrishEconomy.ie Lenihan has engaged in another bail out of AIB shareholders and subordinated debt holders for reasons that are hard to fathom.

Brian Lenihan made a statement of October 30 that "AIB's upcoming €5.4 billion will be fully underwritten by the National Pension Reserve Fund Commission (NPRFC) at a fixed price of €0.50 per share." The catch as noted by Karl Whelan is "Unfortunately, the shares closed on Friday at €0.337."
So the way things are being set up the Fund is going to drop an impressive €1.8 billion when those shares are bought. So what would be the alternative. IS there an alternative. Well one possible option layed out is " Cancel the underwriting, nationalise the bank and appoint an assessor to value the shares. If, for instance, the shares were valued at their closing price on Friday, this would cost us €364 million. Which sounds better? Losing €1.8 billion or losing €364 million. Is it worth €1.4 billion to retain a tiny private ownership share?"
Which again would be the SF position. Get these banks nationalised. Grasp the nettle and stop trying to keep them in private hands via huge, unwarranted state subventions for no benefit to the state.
How can Brian Lenihan agree to just provide a 1.8 Billion subvention simply to avoid nationalisation. They are totally in hock to the bond holders and the developers as noted by Martin Ferris and Pearse Doherty. And the property developers and bond holders are no fools. There advise is good advice. Good for bond holders and good for developers. Indeed the only fools here would appear to be the Min. of Finance and his team who despite all their pro-market fawning have only succeeded in driving interest rates over 7%.
They have brought us to the Greeks level of debt. The way things are going we'll end up fire saling every single asset which will be bought for next to nothing by investors. That may well be the end game here.

Housing advice from developers and debt advice from debt holders

2010-10-30T11:03:00.000+01:00

Over the last week the SF Oireachtas team put the focus right on the grossly negligent decision of the govt. to continue to take advice (and act in the interest of) property developers while at the same time relying on bond holders to give advice on dealing with the economy. The south of Ireland is now a profit center designed to maximise returns for a few business interests rather than a state seeking to guarantee the highest standard of well-being for its inhabitants.

Bond Holders:

The Sinn Féin Spokesperson on Workers Rights, Martin Ferris TD has claimed that the Government’s austerity programme is not only designed to pay for failed bondholders and speculators but is being advised by them. He referred to the fact that the Chairperson of Goldman Sachs Peter Sutherland whose Asset Management section holds Anglo Bonds has been advising the Government on the cuts.

Deputy Ferris said: “Apart from the economic and financial issues that we have discussed here for the past few days there is the whole moral and ethical aspect of the situation.

“All of the proposed misery is being planned to benefit failed speculators among whom are the Anglo bondholders. There are websites which have published the names of these companies and there are discussion groups on the internet about it. And yet no national newspaper here has regarded it as of sufficient importance.

“While most of the bondholders are European based there are Irish connections and no doubt some of our fine patriotic and charitable tax exiles have their noses in the trough.

“More importantly perhaps is the connection between all of this and the fact that representatives of these people are advising the Government on how best to make the rest of us pay for their mess.

“Take Peter Sutherland for example. He has held various high positions in this state and on behalf of this state abroad. His views are still given a lot of credence and he was recently widely quoted in claiming that this state had an obligation to protect the Anglo Irish bondholders.

“And of course he has been advising, in a totally disinterested way of course, the Government on how they should deal with the crisis. Among his proposals has been to sell state companies. And no doubt he probably knows chaps who might be interested in buying them at a fair price.

“How many of those who referred favourably to Sir Peter’s excellent advice also referred to his own possible self interest and the interest of his friends in all of this? He is, after all, Chairperson of Goldman Sachs whose Asset Management section is a key Anglo bondholder and which incidentally made profits of more than €13 billion last year.

“If our priority is to look after people like this, then the description given on one web site of Ireland as, ‘an international welfare state for super-rich bankers’ is all too accurate.”

DEVELOPERS:

Pearse Doherty shows that the only opposition, the only alternative voice in the Oireachtas, is Sinn Fein. Labour and Fine Gael think you can build a consensus with corrupted and bought out politicians.

NO RETREAT AND NO FUDGE ON FIGHTING TORY CUTS

2010-10-26T13:28:00.003+01:00

Below is a statement from Conor Murphy on the need to fight the planned Tory cuts. As stated previously I believe Sinn Féin must refuse to implement these cuts full stop.

We are a left wing party and must refuse to be pawns of a right wing goverment which is directly attacking working people. We must show working people from across Ireland and from various cultural traditions, that Sinn Féin will fight for them. It was not the working class that caused this mess.

Executive must take lead in challenging cuts

Sinn Féin MLA and Executive Minister Conor Murphy has stated that the Executive should now prepare a united approach to fighting the punitive cuts being brought forward by the British government. This follows today’s Executive meeting which dealt mainly with the Comprehensive Spending Review and the affect it will have on the local economy.

Speaking earlier Mr Murphy said:

“Today’s meeting was realistic and dealt with the issues at hand.

“We put it to our Executive colleagues that there needs to be consensus when fighting these cuts. We were elected to do this and represent the citizens of the North, to deliver for them and not to acquiesce to what the British government has proposed. This would be failing our electorate gravely.

“The Tory government, though Owen Patterson, has said that they received an endorsement for their platform of cuts from the electorate and that people knew what they were voting for.

“Let us be clear. That mandate was rejected whole-heartedly at the last election in the North of Ireland with not one conservative candidate being elected. We said no then to cuts then and we are saying no now.

“We have laid out measures to grow the economy based around what was promised from the Gordon Brown. Owen Patterson stated he would honour this agreement yet £4bn has been removed from this package.

“This is a disaster for the local economy, especially the construction industry. There is no fairness in devastating one of the main sectors of the northern economy, as there is no fairness in attacking the most vulnerable in society through attacks on pensions, benefits and low-income families.

“Coming from this we need to see the political parties sitting down, bringing proposals to the table to work out a clear strategy on the best way forward.

“Sinn Féin have already released our document and there has been positive acceptance of it containing viable and workable economic proposals. Let debate these and lets have the other parties bring forward similar proposals. The initiative lies with us all here.

“The Assembly has already been recalled to debate the economic crisis and as an Executive we must follow suit. Today is the start of that process. We need to accelerate our efforts and work towards safeguarding and providing jobs in the immediate future and putting in place economic stimulants for future growth.”

The story of the NHS rowers - Tony Benn

2010-10-22T13:10:00.001+01:00

“There was a boat race between a Japanese crew and a crew from the National Health Service (UK). Both sides practised long and hard and the Japanese team won by a mile. So the NHS ...faced with this problem setup a working party which reported that the Japanese had eight people rowing and one steering and the NHS had eight people steering and one rowing.

So they brought in management consultants and the management consultants confirmed the diagnosis, suggested the NHS team be completely restructured to make it more efficient, more cohesive, streamlining and all-round better performance. A strategy document was drawn up and the recommendations encouraged restructuring for the entire organisation.

As part of the restructuring, a number of appointments were made including three Assistant Steering Managers, three Deputy Steering Managers, a Director of Steering Services and the rower was given an incentive to row harder. They had another race, this time the NHS team lost by two miles, so management laid off the rower for poor performance, sold the boat and gave the Director of steering services a large payout for making the ‘hard decisions’ and concluded they had too many management consultants and not enough managers!"

A story from Tony Benn.

Too busy to hold an election.

2010-10-20T18:13:00.000+01:00

The Government is telling us its too busy with the "job in hand" to hold elections. But they are not too busy to open new FF offices in Crossmaglen (80 years late better than never I guess) or attend Ogra FF talk-ins, attend their own drink ins and waste time opening shops and conferences and any other myriad number of locations and non-events over the last 16 months. What a weak and watery excuse.

Mary Lou McDonald noted in her blog that there is something seriously wrong when a government will go to any lengths to prevent elections

The government is dead set against a general election. It would be a ‘distraction’, they say, from ‘the job in hand’. They don’t want to be ‘distracted’ from their bailouts for the bankers- cutbacks for the people agenda.

They don’t want to hold elections to fill the empty seats in Donegal South West, Waterford and Dublin South either. The ‘distraction’ of losing those bye-elections could bring the government down.

Avoiding elections is an expensive business. It cost €9000 to transport junior minister Dara Calleary from Brussels to the Dáil to vote against holding the bye-elections. He travelled by government jet and the taxpayer picked up the tab.

Today the government goes into the High Court to defend their refusal to hold the bye-elections. Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty took the case. He believes that no government has the right to withhold people’s democratic right to vote and to have full representation in the Dáil. He’s right.

There is something seriously wrong when a government will go to any lengths to prevent elections.

The government, Labour and Fine Gael have an agreed position to introduce crushing cutbacks over the next four years. Brian Cowen and company now want to formalise that consensus so they’ve invited like-minded parties to talks.

The Taoiseach’s decision to exclude Sinn Féin from discussions because we oppose those cuts shows that the Government is not willing to listen to any alternative opinion.

Politicians talking among themselves is no substitute for an election.
The scale of our economic problems, the length of the dole queues and the staggering numbers emigrating – these are the reasons why the government is running scared of elections. They are the very same reasons why an election is so necessary.

We need an agreed way forward. A way forward democratically agreed by the electorate. After all it is the people who are in charge here.

Campaign against Water charges

2010-10-13T21:53:00.001+01:00

The campaign against water charges has a new and valuable portal that to help organise a campaign against the unfair water charges - http://www.nowatercharges.ie/ .

The site highlights how water charges will "hit the lowest income group four times harder than the highest. It will give rise to annual bills in the region of 170 euro per person or 685 per family of four."

This is also a campaign for a more thoughful approach to how the state should handle the issue of water distribution in the southern state.

One option the Govt. is looking at is an outlay of €500 million to install meters in 1.1 million households with proponents pushing a demand for full cost recovery i.e the householders will pay for everything with the possibility of a bill of up to €500 before the tap started to flow.

The Govt. focus is wrong. The focus must be on making the water distribution system more effective rather than trying to control the pattern of consumption. Currently 58% of treated water is lost through broken pipes. Actively tackling leaks would, according to the Local Government Review Group, make a significant contribution to managing the cost of the system.

The Fianna Fail govt. decided to build housing state after housing state and encouraged its friends to enter into large scale investment property deals domestically and internationally when it should have been investing in the national infrastructure.

Now they want us to pay for their mistakes...again.

Remembering the Past: Fenian Col. Michael Corcoran

2010-10-11T19:58:00.000+01:00

On October 11, 1860, US army units in New York City were instructed to turn out in parade in honour of the visiting Prince of Wales, the 19-year-old heir to the English throne. One unit refused to do so: The fighting Irish 69th Regiment.

The refusal by leading fenian Col. Michael Corcoran to march led to an significant increase in the recruitment of soldiers into the Fenian movement.

Corcoran himself was an interesing figure. When his father died his pension ceased and Michael joined the Revenue police and worked in Donegal. By 184e he had however joined the Ribbonmen and spent the next two years involved in agitation. Then suddenly he quit the police and went to America. He joined the New York Militia the 69th and became involved in the Irish cause. When the New York branch of the fenians was founded he was the first man sworn in by John o'Mahony

Corcoran later led the Irish legion, an all Irish brigade, in the Federal army. One of the units in that brigade the 155th NY had very significant Fenian Brotherhood. In June, 1866 they took part in the Fenian invasion of Ontario with the aim of using Canada as leverage in negotiations to secure Irish independence. The invasion was not a success and the unit was later forced to withdraw back to New York. John Corcoran was not involved. He had already passed from a stroke a few years earlier.

One of the most striking tales of his life started on the 6th October 1860..Corcoran had just turned down tickets to a dinner in the Prince's honor as he was not "not desirous of joining in the festivity."
The "festivity" was going to be an undemocratic assembly of the high and mighty. Corcoran would not follow suit. A democratic vote was put to the men who agreed that marching was not an option.

Corcoran stated that the men would not march in honour of "a sovereign under whose reign Ireland was made a desert and her sons forced to exile." making clear that Irish men in New York would not be turning out for "the bald-faced son of our oppressor."

Polite America, ignorant or uncaring of the exploitative and opressive conditions then pertaining in Colonial Ireland, was furious. Corcoran was arrested, stripped of his command and prepared for court-martial. The wider Irish community however appreciated his, and his men's efforts. A green flag remembering the event was presented to the regiment. Before the court-martial was carried out the American civil war had begun and the Federal state had more pressing concerns.

Corcoran died from a stroke in 1863.

Martin, Ulster fry and the Tories

2010-10-10T10:39:00.001+01:00

Well, who would have thought it? Martin McGuinness sitting with a bunch of Unionists eating an Ulster Fry at a fringe meeting of the British Conservative Party conference. OMG!

Okay, I’ll try and look beyond the obvious confusion at seeing a major republican figure sitting in the company he was at the venue he was, but what was he doing there?

Martin is Deputy First Minister of the six counties and he is in a coalition government with Unionists, okay we accept this fact. The British government is planning on imposing massive public expenditure cuts that if introduced will destroyed the lives of thousands of working class people. So the coalition partners in the Northern government head to the Conservative conference to argue the case for not introducing the cuts in the North. Okay I can accept that.

As Martin said at the assembly prior to his trip, “Let me be very clear, Sinn Féin will oppose the unfair and unjust proposed cuts by the British Government; our position remains that we must grow our economy, protect those most vulnerable in our society and ensure that we work to meet the requirements of those in most objective need.”

Also an excellent piece in An Phoblacht argues the case against the cuts and the need to move power over the Northern economy away from London and back to Ireland. http://aprnonline.com/?p=78042 This article concludes with this paragraph.

United resistance“As a party we are looking to build an alliance with the trade union movement and the community and voluntary sector to resist the cuts and to defend frontline services,” Mitchel said. “The public sector did not create the economic crisis – it was the private sector.
“We should not accept the inevitability of cuts. We should focus our minds on challenging them. All parties should agree a common approach in all of this.
“We need to enter into a negotiation with the British Government to resist cuts and secure proper control of the economic levers which will allow us to map a way out of the current recession and to protect the most vulnerable and those experiencing disadvantage at the same time.”
“We need to plan to grow the economy and all options must be on the table. This includes the development and harmonisation of the all-island economy. The existence of two currencies, two different tax and social welfare regimes, two health services, and so on, all restrict our ability to effectively tackle the effects of the recession.
“We need to end needless duplication and develop efficient systems that benefit everyone on this island.”

THE BIG BUT…

All of the above I have no problem with and indeed support. We entered into the GFA in order to build a better Ireland, with Ireland’s future being determined by Irish people. So, all of the above in my mind fits into this category.

BUT, what if the attempt to build a successful opposition to Tory/Lib cuts fails to stop the cuts? What then?

I believe we cannot allow our party to be a tool to implement massive cuts in services across the North. We cannot accept that we are powerless to resist the inevitability of these cuts and therefore our job is to make them as palatable and painless as possible.

If we were to allow this to happen we would be heading for disaster North and South of the border.

At present in the South we are attacking the major party consensus on the need for cuts. We are organizing a mass march in Dublin on 4th December against these cuts and we are right to do this. However, whether we like it or not we are judged by most people as a largely Northern party, and if people want to vote for us they will look to our record in the North as proof or what we really are all about. If Martin’s Ulster fry up fails to stop the cuts then the party must fight them in every way possible and refuse to implement them.

If this does not happen then people across the 32 counties will make their own judgments on Martin’s trip to the Tory Conference, and they will make up there own mind as to who and what we are all about.

You've won the Sweepstakes - The outsourcing of responsibility in south Ireland.

2010-10-09T23:50:00.000+01:00

When the saorstát was set up the new administration choose the least path of resistance when it came to the provision of a number of important services. Two fundamental services necessary for the development of a state where effectively devolved from state control - Education and Health. While there may have been a reason at the start to do so to allow this to continue for decades was a serious failure of State responsibility and helped create or perpetuate a state not able to identify its responsibilities and act on them.

Significant elements of Health care was provided by a mix of hospitals predominantly ran by the catholic church, with some few provided by the protestant churches and some intermittent, and resisted, state oversight. However while both voluntary hospitals resisted the state they accepted its funding as and when needed. The saorstat was naturally in a financially weakened state considering the turbulent times it had passed through. Due to a low population base and a weakened economy it had difficulty raising the necessary funds to support hospitals. The answer was the Irish hospital sweepstakes - a state monopoly on lottery i.e a gambling racket - not that I dont have anything against a flutter but you'd think churches would. The sweepstakes was an okay idea in the sense that it managed to extend the funding of hospitals beyond the limited population of the saorstát with significant funds coming from abroad. It was a bad idea in that it was used to fund institutions which were not under the absolute control of the state but were the equivalent of privatised institutions. Mary Harney would have liked the idea - State money to support non-state monopolies of critical services.

The Sweepstake itself was open to all the flaws of a racket managed by Govts. (of both parties) with a penchant for handing responsibility to someone, anyone. The American edition of Reader's Digest once described the Sweeps as "the greatest bleeding heart racket in the world". Many of the funds raised in America of Britain never made it back to Ireland but went into the pockets of distributors. But there was a more pernicious element to the Sweepstakes than that.

The story of the Sweepstakes has many parallels with modern Ireland. The Sweepstakes was set up with loopholes that allowed its organisers leave large sums undeclared as expenses. The impact of the sweepstakes started to spread to other sectors beyond the health. Soon directors of the Sweepstakes were to be found in every sector of the economy with some directors sitting on up to 30 company boards. Similar to the golden circle mapped by TASC a small group of men were taking control over every aspect of the economy. Apparently RTE had enough material in the mid 1970s to expose the deep concerns many felt about the Sweepstakes. It will surprise no one that RTE choose not to broadcast it. (How RTE can be made a neutral non-govt. controlled station is an important challenge for the future.)

The state failing to provide important services, instead relying on non-state institutions funded by state raised revenue, corruption and the misuse of state funds to gain control of wide sectors of the economy, a media gagged and incapable of reporting the truth. A decades long story unchallenged by FF or by FG.

Education is also another area where the state just mosied on glad that someone else was doing the lifting. Currently about 90% of primary schools are patroned by the Roman Catholic church. These schools are privately owned, publicly funded institutions. Across the school sector the state is an outside party - there to pay the bills. The patron is not a figure head. They have ultimate responsibility for the school ethos, the appointment of the board of management, financial and legal matters and the supervision of staff appointments in accordance with Department regulations. Patrons generally discharge their responsibilities in close consultation with boards of management and other interested parties involved in the schools. In other words they have significant powers.

While the catholic church figures heavily in the outsourcing of Education as well this is not about the catholic church. Indeed there are many other denominations and of course non-denominational schools. Similarly while in the Health sector there are some very objectionable acts by catholic denominated churches. (Notably in 2005 the board of the Mater Hospital in Dublin stopped a trial for a new cancer drug. Women who wished to take part in the trial could not get pregnant which obviously meant they had to use contraception or not have sex. This was in conflict with the ethos. Money from gambling was not in conflict with the ethos of hospitals though - but as horrible a story as that is I am not trying to focus on the catholic church here)

The main focus must be on the state's tendency to step back from taking responsibility for critical functions. While they may have reason to do so for a few years at the foundation of the southern state it was not acceptable to leave the situation continue for decades across two of the most important areas in which a state must provide services. To do so was to accept the principle that any service, no matter how critical need not fall under the Govt's direct and complete control. The Govt. became a partner rather than a leader. Rather than forcing the pace of change, modernisation etc. it just sat back and let society drift. Little surprise then that the current Govt. has provided little leadership in the financial crisis. Instead it has taken the Banks at their word, it has followed the interests of the developers and the golden circle rather than steering its own course. Commentators like David McWilliams and Brian Lucey have both wondered aloud about whose interest the Govt. is serving. At this point about 3/4 of the south's residents agree its not the Irish nation. But I dont believe that the Govt. could ever have done anything other than follow the Banks and the advice of the special interest groups even if they were not as delinquent as they have proven. The tradition of governance in south Ireland is not one of leadership but of relinquishing sovereignty to any group willing to take over some of its tasks.

Fianna Fail stand indicted as do Fine Gael on this point.

The final point on this abdication of responsibility I will leave to Professor Kathleen Lynch who recently gave the annual Tasc lecture. In a speech entitled From a Neo-Liberal to an Egalitarian State: Imagining a Different Future' she notes:

As a society, we do not have a strong commitment to public solidarity despite our rhetoric. This is reflected in failure over the course of the last 10 years for social welfare provisions to keep pace with the cost of living. We have one of the lowest rates of social expenditures on education, housing, transport and welfare within the EU. (See Tables 1 and 2 below using the SILC data). Our lack of commitment to the public sphere is evident in many concrete ways, from the lack of public spaces for play for children (especially safe indoor places) to the lack of public sports facilities, to the lack of investment parks and public amenities in so many towns and villages.

It is even evident in our churches. Most of our leisure and sports facilities are actually privately owned by clubs that are legally constituted as private bodies; GAA pitches, tennis courts, gyms, rugby pitches, golf courses etc. are all private. Indoor play areas for children are almost universally commercial. And the lack of commitment to the good of the public sphere is evident when public and private interests collide; it is evident in the way space is organised and the quality of the built environment between public and private hospitals, in the relative luxury and comfort of private rooms versus public wards; it is visible in the pitches, tennis courts and other facilities in well-off schools compared with the bare yards of small fields that are there for those in less-well-off or poorer areas.

Ar muin na muice

2010-10-09T09:47:00.000+01:00

Labhair Darren Mac an Phríora le Comh. Críona Ní Dhálaigh faoi bpolaisaí ainmnithe nua a mbeidh ag teacht i bhfeidhm i gCathair Bhaile Átha Cliath.

Link

Will they, Fu*k!

2010-10-08T21:13:00.001+01:00

Blogging comment of the week would surely be from Betty who posted the following on Irishelection.com in relation to all this talk of a grand coalition :Question–if there is a change of govt will FF support the new administration??? As Mr James Gogarty [might have] said “will they, F***

Irish Politicians or American mobsters?

2010-10-02T17:07:00.003+01:00

A man who set the world record for current account deficits. An embezzler from a charitable fund. A beneficiary of passport retailing. A tax dodger with a lucky streak on the horses and a man known the world over as a "drunken moron". What do they all have in common?

Are the above decent Irish people, a list of Fianna Failers or 5 of America's nastiest mobsters.

They are off course random mobsters from American history. Do you think any country would so damned to have 5 useless leaders like that in a row? Certainly not in Ireland. We set high standards for political office you know.

Sure we've only ever had decent, honest men rule us here.

Is Ciaran Cuffe lost in a ghost estate?

2010-10-01T17:08:00.002+01:00

An excited Ciarán Cuffe, as opposed to an excitable Paul Gogarty, wrote on his blog about what he wanted to achive now that he had finished up his staycation on the Beara. There is a whole list of ambitious things to do, or just talk about. One of which was a review of the nationwide survey of ghost estates carried out by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, where Ciarán is whiling his time away as junior minister, with the intention of coming up with a plan to put the empty houses in Ireland and the excess Irish hotel capacity to use.

One of the things he promised was by the end of September we should have "some good analysis completed, and be in a position to sit down with stakeholders and offer some positive advice on these issues."

As the excellent Nama Wine Lake notes its now October 01st and neary a peep out of Minister Cuffe? Did he forget to do the work? Was he over excited after his holidays or is it just another sorry episode in the demise of the Greens - a party that made big promises about being in Government but when it got there didnt really know what to do.

Is he waiting for permission from Fianna Fail or maybe Ciarán's still driving around a ghost estate wasted on the noxious fumes of planet Bertie. Save yourself some trouble Ciarán and get in contact with Sinn Fein to learn about solutions to the housing issue.

IS THIS THE REAL FIANNA FÁIL COMMANDMENTS - OR JUST A JOKE

2010-09-30T20:00:00.002+01:00

This piece was sent into us by a Mr X. Is it a real internal document of just a piece of humour. You decide!

FF - The Republican Party – The commandments =============================================
Excerpts from the parties Green “cheque” book, the idealogical manual for all its volunteers and party activists. It seems that FF's radical interpretation of Republicanism is still as strong as ever.

"any gombeen or billionaire is just entitled as any other gombeen or billionaire to unfettered access to state funding and contracts, (here after known as Group B)".

“who here objects if we take power in this state, with a ballot box in this hand and an arm load of brown envelopes in the other”.

“Every Irish person, irregardless of their religion or station in life is entitled to die on our roads (which are the envy of Albania) or contract MRSA in our hospitals. (Group B excepted).”

“In order to increase the wealth of the nation, property will become communal in ownership. Everyone will have a share. For example, young couple buys house, couple of years later Bank takes house, and sells it to local Gombeen man who was bailed out by Nama. Everyone will have a piece at some stage.“

“Everyone no matter how small or insignificant, (publicans otherwise) has their part to pay.”

“If we cannot take ownership of this country at this moment and through our current actions then be confident that If our deed has not been sufficient to win ownership of Ireland, then our children will win it by a better deed, by more medical cards, more tar on the road and “sure wasn’t my old fellow a great friend of you auld fella”

“To break the connection between the Irish electorate and the ballot box, the never-failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of our party, to do what it likes. 3 times in 3 generations FF have risen up and tried to bankrupt the state. Standing on that fundamental right to rule and ruin in self-interest and again asserting it in in the face of the world’s politicians and economists. We propose that Blueshirt or Sticky or Shinner be replaced with the one title “ shure dem lot are just as bad”

FF - The Republican Party

The last term for this Govt?

2010-09-30T11:00:00.003+01:00

Sinn Fein TDs set out the strategy for the coming Leinster house session

Ruin a gate and your nailed. Ruin an economy and you'r scot free.

2010-09-29T20:38:00.000+01:00

Its plain wrong that a man will be indicted tomorrow, probably for criminal damages, for driving a cement truck into the gates of Leinster House for damages that will run to maybe a few thousand. Who has been prosecuted for driving a coach and four horses through financial regulation, through the banking system, through the whole economy?

No one yet and if it wan't for Sinn Fein pushing a banking fraud inquiry then maybe it might not even be an issue for investigation.

Irish Workers more committed than ever.

2010-09-28T17:57:00.002+01:00

Thats the finding of the latest ESRI report which states that " Our workers are more committed than ever; they are more willing to accept change and to take on more responsibility...". The broad study reviewed the Irish workplace in 2009 against that of "Celtic tiger" Ireland. Irish workers are stepping up to the plate - taking on more responsibility for less pay.

Over half of the respondents to the survey, conducted between March and June 2009, noted that there had been workplace job losses in the preceding two years and workers were feeling more nervous and under pressure. One-third of employees said that their own job security had decreased compared to only 4 per cent in the previous 2003 survey.

In both the public and private sectors the impact of the recession, and the impact of the "manual devaluation", are evident. 21 per cent of employees reported a decline in hourly pay in the previous two years. Some 37 per cent of public sector workers reported a decline in pay, compared to only 16 per cent of those in the private sector. The burden of adjustment is being borne by ordinary folks who are losing job security and seeing reduced pay conditions.

Typically in all down-sizing organisations the work frequently remains but the no. of people to do it ends up falling. The result is increased burden on the remaining staff. 54 per cent of employees reported increased pressure compared to 34 per cent in 2003. 61 per cent reported an increase in responsibility. Yet the percentage of employees who would work harder to help the organisation to succeed increased from 81 per cent to 89 per cent.

There is a tendency among the more right wing commentariat, or the loony right which cheered on deregulation and excessive credit, to constantly ask for workers to give more, to do more and to accept less.

Lurking in the background to all that commentary was the idea that ordinary Irish people had fooled around and now the bill was due. We had lost the run of ourselves, wanted too much and lost competitiveness. The report has an answer to that hoary chestnut as well:

"This deterioration in competitiveness in recent years is primarily a result of the labour market pressures exerted by the growing bubble in the property market and the building sector of the economy. However, other inefficiencies, including a lack of competition in key areas of the economy, also contributed to the problem."

Consider that in NAMA tranches 1 and 2 that loans valued at €52 billion (pre-hair-cut) were given to 100 people and its clear how tight the inner circle was behind the boom. The self same boom which force the prices up. However as the boy from Pontchartrain says "We are where we are". I personally think it will be difficult to secure appropriate financial and legal redress against these people. It may be that we are forced to instead focus on how to create the anti-corruption framework, and appropriate regulatory controls to ensure that one interest group and one political party can never again co-operate for self profit while risking the future of the state they operate in.

The commentary in the press seems to have forgotten the role of the select, well connected, few. Instead looking at the easy option of blaming the feckless ordinary worker. Well as demonstrated in the ESRI report the ordinary Irish worker is anything but feckless and is more willing to work harder than ever.

It may be countered that well all well and good to blame the developers and Fianna Fail but we need solutions now not blame. And thats a perfectly valid comment because we do need solutions. People dont want finger pointing or retribution. First of all they want to be able to pay their bills like Seamus Sherlock or avoid emigration. But there does need to be a demonstration to the markets, the god like markets*, the interests of the Irish economy are not subservient to the interests of developers or other sectional interests.

As long as Fianna Fail are in power there is every chance that the foreign lenders will doubt the ability of that party to restructure the economy back onto a trajectory of growth and subsequently may question the long term ability of sth. Ireland to repay its debts.

Those commentators in awe of the market's wisdom should now start to focus on the fact that Fianna Fail itself, and its tendency towards sectional interest, may be a factor in why sovereign funds think we are likely to default (and consider that a few days ago the ECB wanted Ireland to activate the bail out fund to see how precariously close FF have now brought us - potentially days away from a default) .

Irish workers are clearly willing to put the head down. Its time that the Irish media took note and started to focus on two other possible reasons that Ireland's bond yields are going through the roof:

(1) Fianna Fail's slash and burn approach is ripping the heart out of the economy;

(2) Fianna Fail are so entrenched with sectional interests that the market must have doubts about whether their commitment to growing the economy is not at odds with their commitment to sectional interests which they have nursed for over a decade.

ESRI: http://www.esri.ie/UserFiles/publications/jacb201045/BKMNEXT168.pdf

* which same markets are new nailing us at near to 7% interest rates. Despite RTE's spin about last weeks debt sale as successful selling debt at over 6% is as successful as buying a litre of milk for a €10. There'll be somebody to sell it to you but you still get taken for a ride.

The costs of pensions and the problem with servants

2010-09-24T22:09:00.003+01:00

"Pretty soon, we’ll be having serious, completely un-self-conscious discussions in major magazines about the servant problem.". So wrote Paul Krugman as he discussed an article which highlighted how the richest percentile in America are feeling hard done by even though they make twice what their counterparts in 1980 did.

Krugman believes that today the American super rich have become coarsened by their super wealth, have lost even the sense they should be embarassed by thinking life is hard on them and only move in circles "where complaining that you only have 9 or 10 times median family income is considered totally acceptable"

A small bit like Peter Sutherland then I guess

Mr Sutherland claimed that our costs - in the main but not exclusively pay - were too high and need to go down.

'If we did so, it would be apparent that we are still way above average in many areas, particularly in the public sector and this says nothing about pension costs,' he said

Yes Peter. What about the pension costs? You as former Attorney General were still receiving a state pension of €51,538 in 2008. You have a fortune of €128 million.

Clearly you are a man of rare talents. Your career is an amazing series of pinnacles and that is impressive (although BP, RBS and Goldman Sachs makes you wonder - they all hit nasty speedbumps ). But for all your talent and your preaching on costs and pensions you were still hitting up the state even with your huge fortune for a measly €51,538 a year.

Another freeloader. As far removed from reality as Krugman's top 1% in America.

For the love of god man give up your paltry, in comparison, state pension before having the gall to talk about the cost of pensions and Dublin's expenditure.

Courage of conviction

2010-09-22T21:21:00.000+01:00

1996 seems like an eternity away. It must seem awfully close for two families though. Volunteers Ed o'Brien and Diarmuid o'Neill both died in that year. They were both young men when they died and as a young teenager at the time I remember being struck by the level of committment and courage that both men must have had.

Ed o'Brien's birthday was 18th September. Diarmuid o'Neill died on 23rd September.

Poverty and Exclusion in Rural Ireland

2010-09-21T19:57:00.000+01:00

With the ploughing champions underway its timely to look at the difficult challenges rural Ireland faces with poverty. You are 7% more at risk of poverty in rural Ireland. Suicide rates can be up to 25% greater than Dublin. Some Farm Incomes, are as low as 12,000, significantly lower than other employment opportunities as highlighted in the Ferris report. After over a decade of Fianna Fail rural Ireland has been sorely treated. Rural voters need to ask themselves would Fine Gael have done anything different. With the EU budget likely to see some fairly radical changes to CAP rural voters need to have a party that can argue their case with conviction and ensure that the smaller Farmer does not lose out simply because they have no connections while the meat processors do or the bigger milk buyers drive down the price.

Additionally the report highlights that there tends to be a low uptake in Rural Ireland of entitlements such as the Farm Assist allowance. Many part time farmers who were relying on construction to boost income should have no hesitation in claiming and as this article points out it can make a real difference in helping to fight poverty.

If you are in Around Athy today or tomorrow make sure you drop by the Sinn Fein stand at 184 Row K.

.....................................................................................................................................................................

Post From the European Anti-Poverty Network:
Rural poverty, intertwined with exclusion and isolation, has been around for a long time. It is documented in Patrick Kavanagh’s “The Great Hunger” and the writings of John B. Keane. Though it is well over a decade on from the publication of Curtin, Tovey and Hasse’s “Poverty in Rural Ireland” the issues examined within each chapter continue to be the main challenges in addressing social disadvantage in rural areas. These include demography, agriculture, access to services and limited employment opportunities.

Poverty is more likely to occur in rural areas than urban areas. In 2008 the risk of poverty in rural Ireland was 6.9 per cent higher than in urban Ireland with at risk rates of 18.2 per cent and 11.3 per cent respectively. Trutz Hasse data shows remote rural areas are consistently amongst the most disadvantaged in the state. The difference between the ‘poorest’ and ‘richest’ counties increased over the Celtic tiger period and disposable incomes in rural areas are below those of urban areas. In rural areas poverty and disadvantage is experienced at individual level, or it is dispersed over large geographical areas. Rural poverty can exist side by side with considerable wealth and affluence but is frequently hidden and unnoticed. Isolation can have serious psychological effects and suicide rates in rural areas can be up to 25% greater than in Dublin.

Rural areas experience higher levels of child poverty and there is some evidence that take-up rates are lower in rural areas, due to less access to information and advice about public benefit entitlement, a prevailing culture of independence and self-reliance in rural areas, and the lack of anonymity in collecting benefits.

The Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice is carrying out a ground breaking study on the cost of a minimum essential standard of living in rural areas and preliminary findings suggest the same basket of goods and services costs rural households significantly more than their urban counterparts.

At the Budapest EU seminar on poverty and social exclusion in rural areas held in June 2009 an interesting piece of research was presented. The study, completed at the end of 2008 – before the worst of our current recession became known – made it clear that rural poverty is still a disappointingly strong constant in the 15 EU countries surveyed, including Ireland. The report cites the importance of European development policy in fighting poverty and social exclusion in rural areas, particularly in terms of its support for improved infrastructure, tourism, rural small and medium enterprises and the continued development of farming. Allied to these are more recent supports for initiatives such as renewable energy, and information and communications technology.

Because of the nature of the rural housing stock, the types of fuels available (with limited opportunities to switch to cheaper fuels such as gas) and their lower incomes rural households are at greater risk of fuel poverty. The carbon tax could cost rural households ten times more than some urban households and the continued lack of detail on the measures proposed to protect low income rural households is regrettable.

Having a job is probably the best safeguard against poverty and exclusion but unemployment in the more rural counties is running above that in the cities. Rural areas are characterised by their narrow economic base. The rise in unemployment occurring across all sectors will be most difficult to resolve in rural areas which are over-reliant on primary industries such as agriculture, construction and low-level manufacturing. According to the 2006 Census, one in five of the working population of rural areas is working in agriculture (as a farmer or agriculture worker), a decline from one in three in 2002. Clearly opportunities for jobs beyond farming and for the families of farmers must be created.

Average farm income last year was €12,000 per farm, the lowest income since 1999. Farm income lags considerably behind the national average with farm incomes in the BMW region lagging even further behind those in the South and East. A social group significantly impacted upon by the decline in construction are smallholders and part-time farmers who supplemented farming income with off-farm work. In many cases they worked full-time in construction and undertook farming in their off hours. A study by O’Brien and Hennessy (2007) has shown that participation in the off-farm labour market plays an important role in ensuring the sustainability of farm households and in insulating farm families from poverty. The challenge faced by this cohort is giving them the opportunity to benefit from retraining.

According to the CSO the greatest factor in determining a household’s access to services is not income, but location. The development of a community based rural transport programme has been a huge asset to rural communities however it is still only in its infancy. According to NESC “Access to services – in health, education, housing and other areas – is also integral to social protection and, in some instances, more important to securing people’s living standards and participation in society than having a higher money income”. The report concludes that such services are vital to maintaining social cohesion and combating social exclusion. At an EU level access to well functioning, accessible, affordable and high quality public services is seen as an important part of citizenship and a fundamental right. The provision of access to services of good quality makes a major contribution to the prevention, reduction and ultimate elimination of rural poverty and social exclusion. Experience has shown that devoting a higher proportion of resources to essential services achieves better outcomes for vulnerable groups, than an over reliance on income support.
... Read More

This post appeared on the European Anti-Poverty Network site was written by Seán O’Leary. Sean is a Policy and Communications Officer with Irish Rural Link – the national network of rural community groups.

Both sites are great resources for

Ireland: A Warning

2010-09-21T15:44:00.004+01:00

This article is taken from Duncan's economic blog. Which looks at british politics from a left perspective.

This article looks at the disasterous economic deflationary policies of the FF/Greens. The labour party here must look at these facts and decide do they wish to go into the next government as coalition partners of FG and end up pesuing the same defaltionary policies, that will result in further economic disaster for the ordinary irish citizen.

Labour must join forces with SF and other pogressives to change politics here for good and build an ecomic that works in the interests of the ordinary Irish citizen.

http://duncanseconomicblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/21/ireland-a-warning/

---------------------------------------------------------------

Duncan’s Economic Blog

Ireland: A Warning

A year ago I wrote a post for Left Foot Forward on the Irish economy. I noted how, unlike Britain, the Irish Government had reacted to the global recession by cutting spending and attempting to drive down costs to remain globally competitive. I also noted this was broadly the policy pushed by the Conservatives at the time.

I assessed what had happened in the year between September 2008 and September 2009.

Nearly one year on, what has been the effect of these polices? Irish GDP is expected to fall by 12%, a staggering decline. Unemployment has reached 12.4% and is still rising. The economy is now in the grip of a severe deflation (minus 5.9%). Finance Minister Brian Lenihan openly talks of the need to “get our cost base down” in order to regain competitiveness. A policy of aiming to balance the budget and drive down wage costs is a throwback to the so-called Treasury View of the 1930s, a policy rejected then by progressives and rightly rejected now. The final irony is that, despite all of this needless suffering, the Irish Government will still be running a budget deficit of 12% of GDP this year while the ratings agencies have already cut Ireland’s sovereign bonds from AAA to AA.
In December last year, as Ireland delivered yet another emergency budget that was again praised by British Tories, I wrote an update.

Iain Dale writes that:

“The PBR the British Chancellor should have delivered, was delivered yesterday in Dublin. Hopefully George Osborne is studying it in great detail.”

The results of Ireland’s policy are plain to see:

• Irish unemployment is 12.5 per cent;

• The country is experiencing deflation at –6.6 per cent;

• GDP has fallen 7.4 per cent over the past year and 10.5% from its peak;

• And despite the cuts they have still had their credit rating downgraded.

But what exactly are the measures that the Tories are so keen to praise?

– Child benefit is being cut by 10%.

– Unemployment benefit is being cut by 4.1%, with larger cuts for those under 25.

– Public Sector workers are facing pay cuts of 5-8%.

– Prescription charges are being increased by 50%.

– Other increased health charges including A&E, inpatient and outpatient charges and a higher monthly threshold above which people cannot get free drugs under the Drug Payment Scheme.

– The Health budget is being cut by €400mn on top of previously announced cuts

– Further departmental cuts will be announced in coming days.

– €960mn is cut from the investment budget
So, a year after the first post and two years after Ireland embarked on its programme of cutting, where are we now?

Not in a good place. As the FT reports:

Ireland’s central bank governor has indicated that Brian Cowen’s government needs to go even further in cutting the forthcoming budget if it wants to restore international confidence in its management of the economy.

…

A year ago the populist Fianna Fáil-led coalition won international plaudits as one of the first EU countries to tackle the crisis head on, administering cuts in public sector pay averaging 15 per cent, and reductions in child and other benefits in the most savage budget in decades.

Yet today Ireland, together with Greece and Portugal, is seen as the most vulnerable of the EU’s peripheral economies, as it struggles with a property and banking crash that has blown a hole in the public finances and threatens the economic recovery.
As Ireland prepares to engage in (another) round of cuts, Bloomberg reports how unconvinced “the markets” are by Irish policy.

Thirty-seven percent of those surveyed say Ireland is likely to default, more than double the rate three months ago, according to a quarterly poll of 1,408 investors, traders and analysts.
Ireland is providing a vivid example that the “cuts don’t work”. As the head of asset allocation at Credit Suisse Private Bank warned a year ago

Spending cuts to be announced today by Finance Minister Brian Lenihan may end up sacrificing long-term economic growth for reducing the budget deficit, an Irish author and head of asset allocation at Credit Suisse Private Banking has warned.

Michael O’Sullivan, whose book, ‘Ireland and the Global Question’, was published in 2006, warned this week that Mr Lenihan’s expected swingeing cuts could do long-term damage. “Arguably the Irish bond market is being saved at the expense of Irish society”, said Mr O’Sullivan.

“By cutting spending you lower the trend line of growth and store up bigger fiscal problems down the line,” he added.
Cutting now reduces growth and tax revenue and increases unemployment and welfare spending. It does not close the deficit in a sustainable manner.

Ireland, a euro member, may have little choice but to pursue this policy. The UK though does face a choice, and we are making the wrong one.

Sinn Féin's Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin - Outlines the ONLY way forward in the South

2010-09-21T13:35:00.001+01:00

HELP THE SAVE 16 MOORE STREET CAMPAIGN

2010-09-17T18:38:00.002+01:00

The Save 16 Moore Street campaign represent those people who would like to see the full preservation of 16 Moore St and all its contents dating back to 1916 instead of being demolished by developers. This group has no political bias and is open to all. Below is a message I received from them asking for support in their campaign.

The facebook page of the group is
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/group.php?gid=114656558567416&v=info&ref=ts

Subject: Certificate of Support

Now is the time to show real support for the Moore Street campaign. Adapted from a 1930's 1st battalion Dublin Brigade Certificate of Service, a limited edition scroll will be inscribed with your chosen name and signed by the founders of the Moore Street campaign including James Connolly's great grandson. It is already a collectors item.

Please see main above for image.

Funds raised will be used to pay for the design and print costs for HQ16: The Citizens Plan for Dublin: Part 1 which offers a real alternative to the destruction of the Battlefield area. Any monies left over will go towards the restoration and maintenance of the various Dublin Brigade memorials throughout the city.

There are no office, administration costs involved.

Price: E 25.00 inc p&p

Cheques/ Drafts payable to P Cooney c/o 46 Shantalla Drive. Beaumont. Dublin 9

Thank you for supporting the Save Moore Street campaign.

Fraud Inquiriy - Bankers and Fianna Fail politicians have questions to answer

2010-09-17T18:30:00.001+01:00

Great post from Rathangan Republican News blog on Eoin o'Broin's recent call for a fraud inquiry. Steps like this allied with the wide ranging campaigns on housing, hospitals etc are bringing the fight to those who thought they were above the law or have no responsibility. The culture of inpunity is going to have to end in this country.

Dublin Sinn Féin representative, Eoin O' Broin is demanding that Gardaí launch a fraud inquiry to investigate the Taoiseach Brian Cowen, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan and top officials at Bank of Ireland and AIB. Mr O' Broin has contacted Gardaí at Pearse Street in Dublin, saying the men should face questions on whether they deliberately withheld information from the Dáil regarding the insolvency of Anglo Irish Bank. He also wants the chiefs of the banks to answer questions on whether they withheld information from Mr Cowen and Mr Lenihan in meetings before the enactment of the bank guarantee scheme which led to huge financial loss for the Irish taxpayer.

Criminals should be prosecuted.

O' Broins move comes in the wake of the decision by Iceland authorities to bring charges against former government ministers over their alleged failings connected to the economic crisis. The ministers, including former PM Geir H. Haarde will now be sent to court where they will have to prove their innocence. In such a climate, it comes as no surprise that someone should bring similar charges against our own incompetent government. Every man, woman and child in this country has been effected by their failures to deal with the economic decimation of our nation, and if you walk into any public gathering in Ireland, you will hear our citizens criticising this government for their inaction.

The only surprise is that it was left to a Sinn Féin representative to do this, while the supposed main opposition of Fine Gael/ Labour sat on their thumbs, sniggering about Brian Cowens alcohol problems. It was left to a Sinn Féin representative to take action while the many banner waving "socialist" parties did nothing, except perhaps critising Sinn féins status as a peoples party because they don't waste time holding meetings to discuss the finer points of dogma created by men who have been dead for a century. It was left to a Sinn Féin representative to take the peoples fight to the heart of the corrupt regime in Leinster house while the rest did nothing.

Eoin O' Broin deserves a medal for bringing this action against these people, who have been protected by the inadequacies of the opposition, and their amiable relationship with the O' Reilly media for so long. Now is not the time to sit back and allow Joe Duffy to tell us that this is Ireland, and not Iceland or Greece. Don't listen to Kevin Myers tell you that Eoin O' Broin is a supporter of terrorism who wants to eat your children and turn the country into a homosexual, vegetarian, communist utopia. Don't mind George Hook when he tells you that the Government are to blame but bringing them to court is a step to far, and will turn Ireland into a joke.

"Breaking stones in the mid day sun..."

They have already succeeded in turning Ireland into a joke.

The protesters in Greece carried banners declaring proudly, "WE ARE NOT THE IRISH".

This is not the view of Ireland I want the rest of the world to have. This is not the way I would like future generations of Irish men and Irish women to remember us.

We are Irish and we are proud. We don't lie down for anyone, and we certainly don't allow rulers to get away with hell and leave us lying in the gutter. Just ask the english.

Ninety four years ago, brave Irish men and Irish women rose up against a corrupt regime that seemed untouchable at the time. Though few in number, and though eventually forced to surrender, the news of their actions spread around the globe, and the memory of their rising has inspired Irish people the world over since.

Our own Irish Republican Super Hero, O' Broinman?

Eoin O' Broin has taken the fight to the government, but he cant do so alone. It is time for all of us to rise up and stand behind O' Broin. Its time to get rid of these criminals and the equally guilty main opposition that have allowed them to stay in their Ivory tower for so long.

Our National (Irish) Language - By Thomas Davis

2010-09-16T18:45:00.000+01:00

Thomas Davis of Mallow died on the 16th September 1845. In his short life he made a great contribution towards restoring the spirit of Irish nationhood and and remphasing that an Ireland without the Irish language would only be half a country. Davis wrote the following pamphlet urging that the Irish nation have the courage to forge its own path. It called for a sense of courage and purpose that would serve us well today.

MEN are ever valued most for peculiar and original qualities. A man who can only talk commonplace, and act according to routine, has little weight. To speak, look, and do what your own soul from its depths orders you are credentials of greatness which all men understand and acknowledge. Such a man's dictum has more influence than the reasoning of an imitative or commonplace man. He fills his circle with confidence. He is self-possessed, firm, accurate, and daring. Such men are the pioneers of civilisation, and the rulers of the human heart.

Why should not nations be judged thus? Is not a full indulgence of its natural tendencies essential to a people's greatness? Force the manners, dress, language, and constitution of Russia, or Italy, or Norway, or America, and you instantly stunt and distort the whole mind of either people.

The language, which grows up with a people, is conformed to their organs, descriptive of their climate, constitution, and manners, mingled inseparably with their history and their soil, fitted beyond any other language to express their prevalent thoughts in the most natural and efficient way.

To impose another language on such a people is to send their history adrift among the accidents of translation--'tis to tear their identity from all places--'tis to substitute arbitrary signs for picturesque and suggestive names--'tis to cut off the entail of feeling, and separate the people from their forefathers by a deep gulf--'tis to corrupt their very organs, and abridge their power of expression.

The language of a nation's youth is the only easy and full speech for its manhood and for its age. And when the language of its cradle goes, itself craves a tomb.

What business has a Russian for the rippling language of Italy or India? How could a Greek distort his organs and his soul to speak Dutch upon the sides of the Hymettus, or the beach of Salamis, or on the waste where once was Sparta? And is it befitting the fiery, delicate-organed Celt to abandon his beautiful tongue, docile and spirited as an Arab, "sweet as music, strong as the wave"--is it befitting in him to abandon this wild, liquid speech for the mongrel of a hundred breeds called English, which, powerful though it be, creaks and bangs about the Celt who tries to use it?

We lately met a glorious thought in the "Triads of Mochmed," printed in one of the Welsh codes by the Record Commission: "There are three things without which there is no country--common language, common judicature, and co-tillage land--for without these a country cannot support itself in peace and social union."

A people without a language of its own is only half a nation. A nation should guard its language more than its territories--'tis a surer barrier, and more important frontier, than fortress or river.

And in good times it has ever been thought so. Who had dared to propose the adoption of Persian or Egyptian in Greece--how had Pericles thundered at the barbarian? How had Cato scourged from the forum him who would have given the Attic or Gallic speech to men of Rome? How proudly and how nobly Germany stopped "the incipient creeping" progress of French! And no sooner had she succeeded than her genius, which had tossed in a hot trance, sprung up fresh and triumphant.

Had Pyrrhus quelled Italy, or Xerxes subdued Greece for a time long enough to impose new languages, where had been the literature which gives a pedigree to human genius? Even liberty recovered had been sickly and insecure without the language with which it had hunted in the woods, worshipped at the fruit-strewn altar, debated on the council-hill, and shouted in the battle-charge.

There is a fine song of the Fusians, which describes

"Language linked to liberty."

To lose your native tongue, and learn that of an alien, is the worst badge of conquest--it is the chain on the soul. To have lost entirely the national language is death; the fetter has worn through. So long as the Saxon held to his German speech he could hope to resume his land from the Norman; now, if he is to be free and locally governed, he must build himself a new home. There is hope for Scotland--strong hope for Wales--sure hope for Hungary. The speech of the alien is not universal in the one; is gallantly held at bay in the other; is nearly expelled from the third.

How unnatural--how corrupting 'tis for us, three-fourths of whom are of Celtic blood, to speak a medley of Teutonic dialects! If we add the Celtic Scots, who came back here from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and the Celtic Welsh, who colonised many parts of Wexford and other Leinster counties, to the Celts who never left Ireland, probably five-sixths, or more, of us are Celts. What business have we with the Norman-Sassenagh?

Nor let any doubt these proportions because of the number of English names in Ireland. With a politic cruelty the English of the Pale passed an Act (3 Edw. IV., c. 3) compelling every Irishman within English jurisdiction "to go like to one Englishman in apparel, and shaving off his beard above the mouth," "and shall take to him an English sirname of one town, as Sutton, Chester, Trym, Skryne, Corke, Kinsale; or colour, as White, Blacke, Browne; or art or science, as Smith, or Carpenter; or office, as Cook, Butler; and that he and his issue shall use this name, under pain of forfeiting his goods yearly."

And just as this Parliament before the Reformation, so did another after the Reformation. By the 28th Henry VIII., c. 15, the dress and language of the Irish were insolently described as barbarous by the minions of that ruffian king, and were utterly forbidden and abolished under many penalties and incapacities. These laws are still in force; but whether the Archaeological Society, including Peel and O'Connell, will be prosecuted seems doubtful.

There was also, 'tis to be feared, an adoption of English names, during some periods, from fashion, fear, or meanness. Some of our best Irish names, too, have been so mangled as to require some scholarship to identify them. For these and many more reasons the members of the Celtic race here are immensely greater than at first appeals.

But this is not all; for even the Saxon and Norman colonists, notwithstanding these laws, melted down into the Irish, and adopted all their ways and language. For centuries upon centuries Irish was spoken by men of all bloods in Ireland, and English was unknown, save to a few citizens and nobles of the Pale. 'Tis only within a very late period that the majority of the people learned English.

But, it will be asked, how can the language be restored now?

We shall answer this partly by saying that, through the labours of the Archaeological and many lesser societies, it is being revived rapidly.

We shall consider this question of the possibility of reviving it more at length some other day.

Nothing can make us believe that it is natural or honourable for the Irish to speak the speech of the alien, the invader, the Sassenagh tyrant, and to abandon the language of our kings and heroes. What! give up the tongue of Ollamh Fodhla and Brian Boru, the tongue of M'Carty, and the O'Nials, the tongue of Sarsfield's, Curran's, Mathew's, and O'Connell's boyhood, for that of Strafford and Poynings, Sussex, Kirk, and Cromwell!

No! oh, no! the "brighter days shall surely come," and the green flag shall wave on our towers, and the sweet old language be heard once more in college, mart, and senate.

But even should the effort to save it as the national language fail, by the attempt we will rescue its old literature, and hand down to our descendants proofs that we had a language as fit for love, and war, and business, and pleasure, as the world ever knew, and that we had not the spirit and nationality to preserve it!

Had Swift known Irish he would have sowed its seed by the side of that nationality which he planted, and the close of the last century would have seen the one as flourishing as the other. Had Ireland used Irish in 1782, would it not have impeded England's re-conquest of us? But 'tis not yet too late.

For you, if the mixed speech called English was laid with sweetmeats on your child's tongue, English is the best speech of manhood. And yet, rather, in that case you are unfortunate. The hills, and lakes, and rivers, the forts and castles, the churches and parishes, the baronies and counties around you, have all Irish names--names which describe the nature of the scenery or ground, the name of founder, or chief, or priest, or the leading fact in the history of the place. To you these are names hard to pronounce, and without meaning.

And yet it were well for you to know them. That knowledge would be a topography, and a history, and romance, walking by your side, and helping your discourse. Meath tells its flatness, Clonmel the abundant riches of its valley, Fermanagh is the land of the Lakes, Tyrone the country of Owen, Kilkenny the Church of St. Canice, Dunmore the great fort, Athenry the Ford of the Kings, Dunleary the Fort of O'Leary; and the Phoenix Park, instead of taking its name from a fable, recognises as christener the "sweet water" which yet springs near the east gate.

All the names of our airs and songs are Irish, and we every day are as puzzled and ingeniously wrong about them as the man who, when asked for the air, "I am asleep, and don't waken me," called it "Tommy M'Cullagh made boots for me."

The bulk of our history and poetry are written in Irish, and shall we, who learn Italian, and Latin, and Greek, to read Dante, Livy, and Homer in the original--shall we be content with ignorance or a translation of Irish?

The want of modern scientific words in Irish is undeniable, and doubtless we should adopt the existing names into our language. The Germans have done the same thing, and no one calls German mongrel on that account. Most of these names are clumsy and extravagant; and are almost all derived from Greek or Latin, and cut as foreign a figure in French and English as they would in Irish. Once Irish was recognised as a language to be learned as much as French or Italian, our dictionaries would fill up, and our vocabularies ramify, to suit all the wants of life and conversation.

These objections are ingenious refinements, however, rarely thought of till after the other and great objection has been answered.

The usual objection to attempting the revival of Irish is, that it could not succeed.

If an attempt were made to introduce Irish, either through the national schools or the courts of law, into the eastern side of the island, it would certainly fail, and the reaction might extinguish it altogether. But no one contemplates this save as a dream of what may happen a hundred years hence. It is quite another thing to say, as we do, that the Irish language should be cherished, taught, and esteemed, and that it can be preserved and gradually extended.

What we seek is, that the people of the upper classes should have their children taught the language which explains our names of persons or places, our older history, and our music, and which is spoken in the majority of our counties, rather than Italian, German, or French. It would be more useful in life, more serviceable to the taste and genius of young people, and a more flexible accomplishment for an Irish man or woman to speak, sing, and write Irish than French.

At present the middle classes think it a sign of vulgarity to speak Irish--the children are everywhere taught English and English alone in schools--and, what is worse, they are urged by rewards and punishments to speak it at home, for English is the language of their masters. Now, we think the example and exertions of the upper classes would be sufficient to set the opposite and better fashion of preferring Irish; and, even as a matter of taste, we think them bound to do so. And we ask it of the pride, the patriotism, and the hearts of our farmers and shopkeepers, will they try to drive out of their children's minds the native language of almost every great man we had, from Brian Boru to O'Connell--will they meanly sacrifice the language which names their hills, and towns, and music, to the tongue of the stranger?

About half the people west of a line drawn from Derry to Waterford speak Irish habitually, and in some of the mountain tracts east of that line it is still common. Simply requiring the teachers of the national schools in these Irish-speaking districts to know Irish, and supplying them with Irish translations of the school books, would guard the language where it now exists, and prevent it from being swept away by the English tongue, as the Red Americans have been by the English race from New York to New Orleans.

The example of the upper classes would extend and develop a modern Irish literature, and the hearty support they have given to the Archaeological Society makes us hope that they will have sense and spirit to do so.

But the establishment of a newspaper partly or wholly Irish would be the most rapid and sure way of serving the language. The Irish-speaking man would find, in his native tongue, the political news and general information he has now to seek in English; and the English-speaking man, having Irish frequently before him in so attractive a form, would be tempted to learn its characters, and by-and-by its meaning.

These newspapers in many languages are now to be found everywhere but here. In South America many of these papers are Spanish and English, or French; in North America, French and English; in Northern Italy, German and Italian; in Denmark and Holland, German is used in addition to the native tongue; in Alsace and Switzerland, French and German; in Poland, German, French, and Sclavonic; in Turkey, French and Turkish; in Hungary, Magyar, Sclavonic, and German; and the little Canton of Grison uses three languages in its press. With the exception of Hungary, the secondary language is, in all cases, spoken by fewer persons than the Irish-speaking people of Ireland, and while they everywhere tolerate and use one language as a medium of commerce, they cherish the other as the vehicle of history, the wings of song, the soil of their genius, and a mark and guard of nationality.

He was hungover and the taxpayers were hung up

2010-09-15T14:27:00.001+01:00

Over 600 world wide media sources picked up on the embarassing interview with Brian Cowen recently. A country which is very keen to demonstrate itself as a serious player as a place to invest money and do business is not best served when the state leader plays into the sterotype of Ireland Land of Saints and Skullers.

Cabinet ministers were quick to state that they had found nothing wrong with the content of the speech. Rather pathetically nobody mentioned the man himself but limited their support to the content of the speech.

The Irishelection.com website has reviewed the content of that speech. By the way Its a good website and worth checking in on every so often. As they note focussing on the content of the Brian Cowen speech makes the whole tawdry event even more pathetic. Their post points out:

In the now infamous interview (transcript) with Morning Ireland, Brian Cowen –

Could not provide a headline number for the total budgetary adjustment being sought next year

Was reduced to vague jargon in trying to explain the budgetary process ('estimates campaign") — this from someone who served 4 years as finance minister

Barely could muster an opinion on whether Dublin should have a Mayor, a critical urban policy decision

Made it clear that despite earlier claims to the contrary, nothing has been done on initiating the Croke Park Agreement or will be before 2011

Hadn't been briefed on the earlier interviews that had taken place about the conference, not least with the despairing graduate and couldn't generate any specific message for her

The FF circling of the wagons today includes the claim that we should focus on the content of what he said. It ain't pretty.

It certainly aint pretty.

I dont go to work hungover. Its not too much to ask that Cowen could do the same especially since he has been paid nearly €2 million gross over the last 7 years to manage the economy.

And look at the economy.

Links between the Basque and Irish people

2010-09-14T18:13:00.000+01:00

The Basque struggle and the Irish struggle has seen deep bonds of friendship arise between both peoples. In response the post on the recent initiative by Euskadi Ta Askatasuna a comment by John pointed out an article on what those deep links are and also some differences as well. An excellent article which is reproduced here - worth reading.

In the wake of the ETA ceasefire, John Dorney takes a look at the historical similarities and differences between Irish and Basque nationalism.

To many Irish people, the events of this week (September 6, 2010), with the armed Basque separatist group ETA declaring an end to its attacks, have a strangely familiar ring.
An armed nationalist group, variously pilloried as terrorists, lauded as freedom fighters and provoking also ambiguous reactions verging from contempt to quiet admiration, declares a ceasefire. The metropolitan government voices caution and declares that the end to violence will not be credible until arms are handed over. Other nationalists welcome the move and call on the government to engage with the political wing of the armed movement.
All of the above could equally be said of the Provisional IRA’s ceasefire of 1994 as of ETA’s announcement in September 2010.
There are other very obvious parallels between the Basque and Irish situations. What radical nationalists think of as the Basque Country, or Euskal Herria, comprises of three provinces of France and four in Spain. The Basque Autonomous Community has just three provinces in northern Spain.

There are very obvious parallels between the Basque and Irish situations

Thus for the radicals, or abertzales, as they call themselves, the current Basque institutions are “partitionist”, the nationalists who accept them are “espanolistas” and the Basque police are “cipayos” (“sepoys” – an analogy to native troops in British India). It doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to find the equivalents in the world view of Irish Republicanism – Northern Ireland as a British-occupied statelet, the Republic a partitionist sham, its police as “Free State” traitors and its nationalist opponents as “West Brits”.

The Basque police or Ertzaintza break up an abertzale demonstration

Nor have the similarities been lost on either Basque or Irish separatist movements. Sinn Fein and Batasuna (the currently banned Basque separatist party) routinely send delegates to each others conferences and Sinn Fein personnel regularly travel to the Basque Country to advise on the peace process there.
But how similar are the two movements really? A look backwards into history reveals important similarities but also significant differences.

Differences
Perhaps the most long standing and powerful basis for Irish nationalism is in the historical grievances of the Irish Catholic community. While Irish Republicanism itself has had strong secular features at times, its core support has always come from the Catholic community and this remains the case in Northern Ireland today.
Historically, since the mid 17^th century until the 19th this community, an ethnic mixture comprising of Old English as well as Gaelic Irish, found itself dispossessed of land and excluded from political power, in favour of an administration based in England and a ruling class, landed and economic, largely composed of Protestant settlers from Britain.
Nothing like this has ever existed in the Basque Country. If anything, ethnic Basques in the 19^th century found themselves in a superior position to the workers from other parts of Spain who flocked to the region to work in the Basque Country’s burgeoning industries. In fact, one aspect of early Basque nationalism, as articulated by its founder, Sabino Arana, in the late 1800s, was hostility to such immigrants, who could be derided as dirty, un-Basque and irreligious.
Moreover, while in Ireland, Irish Catholic folk memory, being both excluded and defeated by the state, generally celebrated its hostility to Britain, until the 20^th century, this was simply not true in the Basque Country. Many Basques of the early 19^th century fought to protect the autonomy or fueros of their provinces, but they did so as Carlists, loyal to the “traditionalist” branch of the monarchy in Madrid against “liberal” line. So according to one interpretation, Basques were actually a repository of the real Spanish identity.

Irish Catholic folk memory, excluded and defeated was traditionally hostile to the state. This was not always true in the Basque Country

The idea that the Basque Country was occupied and oppressed by Spain only really became a reality after the Spanish Civil War, when the Basque nationalists sided with the Spanish Republic against the right wing military uprising. Two Basque provinces, Guipuzcoa and Viscaya declared themselves autonomous during the war.
With the victory of Franco’s forces, the two “traitor provinces” were harshly dealt with. Many nationalists were executed and imprisoned and the Basque language was banned. Modern Basque separatism and ETA in particular, is therefore closely bound up with opposition to the Franco dictatorship and with left wing politics. The radicals close to ETA argue that without a Basque right to self determination, the dictatorship has never really ended.
The point is that whereas in Ireland, particularly in Northern Ireland, where you stood on the national question was largely determined by your family’s religion, origin and class; in the Basque Country it has always been much more fluid. There are children of Andalucian immigrants who have joined ETA. And there are also native Basque speakers, with unbroken Basque ancestry, who support the unity of Spain.
An outgrowth of this difference is that while nationalist conflict in Ireland could sometimes be described as a conflict between communities, this was never true in the Basque Country. It was and is an ideological conflict, running across linguistic and class lines, over what the Basque Country really means. Is it an oppressed nation or a region of Spain?

The conflict in Ireland was sometimes between communities. In the Basque Country it was ideological

Similarities

Hurlers from the early years of the Gaelic Revival -promotion of native sports was important to both Basque and Irish nationalists

If those are important differences, there are also intriguing parallels.
Both Ireland and the Basque County are home to very old languages – Gaeilge and Euskara respectively. In both places, the languages, (neither of which are any relation to English or Spanish respectively) are associated very closely with a traditional rural culture and with national identity. In both Ireland and the Basque Country, the languages of the towns and cities had long been English and Spanish, well before the rise of nationalism in the 19th century.
In the late 19^th century, both Basque and Irish languages, as well as the traditional customs that supported them, looked to be in deep trouble. In Ireland’s case, by emigration and language shift in Irish speaking areas. In the case of Basque, by the advance of Spanish with the rise of industrialisation and the arrival of many thousands of Spanish speakers into the Basque Country (persecution of the language also became a factor under the Franco regime).
The interesting thing is that in both places, at roughly the same time – from the 1890s onwards, the native language and also things like traditional sports –in the Irish case hurling, in the Basque pelota (like handball) – became political symbols for national identity in a way they had never previously been.

The fear that national identity is under mortal threat is common to both Irish andBasque nationalism

In Ireland, nationalists formed the Gaelic League, the Gaelic Athletic Association and the Fianna to promote Irish language, sports and customs. In the Basque Country, the newly formed Basque Nationalist Party, or PNV, promoted the use of euskara, held festivals, encouraged pelota competitions and formed mountaineering clubs to appreciate the beauty of the Basque Country.
This fear that what makes “us” different and special is under mortal threat is common to both Irish and Basque nationalism and can provoke the most radical actions. In 1916, Desmond Fitzgerald, an Irish language enthusiast and member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, justified the armed insurrection of Easter 1916 on grounds that if things continued as they were, “it would be futile to talk of ourselves other than as inhabitants of that part of England that used to be called Ireland. In that state of mind I had decided that extreme action must be taken”[1].
Similarly, ETA remarked in an open letter to the Mexican Zapatistas that, “with a certain irony we could say that it is the tenacity of the struggle for freedom that keeps us Basque”.[2] In their most recent statement, ETA claimed their fight had, “kept the Basque people alive”, in the face of the negation of the Basque People… ETA acted to oppose the attempt at assimilation” [3]
In both cases, armed action was not only a tactic for achieving independence, it was also a way, for some, of saving national identity. “We” were the people who fought against “the oppressor”.
This emphasis on action can have positive consequences. ETA, unlike previous generations of Basque nationalists, made no distinction between children of immigrants and “ethnic” Basques. One researcher, Jeremy MacClancy records: “To members of Herri Batasuna, Basque patriots are abertzales, a status not defined by birth but by performance: an abertzale is one who actively participates in the political struggle for an independent Basque nation with its own distinctive culture. One told me: ‘not being born Basque doesn’t matter, I feel Basque’ ”.[4]

The emphasis on action over orgin can be positive but can also lead to a murderous intolerance.

Similarly, Irish Republicanism has always welcomed those outside the Catholic community provided they are committed activists.
It can also, however, lead to a murderous intolerance. If the “real” Irish or Basque people are those who take part in the struggle, then those who do not, or who oppose it, are not only traitors, but not true compatriots at all. Ernie O’Malley, for instance, IRA leader of the 1920s, recalled stating in 1921 that, , “the people of this country would have to give allegiance to it or if they wanted to support the Empire, they would have to clear out and support the empire elsewhere”[5].
Notice that it was the revolutionaries who would decide to whom the people should give their allegiance. O’Malley, in the Civil War, ended up turning his guns on other Irish nationalists.
Similarly, in modern times, ETA has targeted Basque politicians, journalists and academics who have spoken out against it. The Basque sociologist Begona Aratxaga called this, “the ruthless and authoritarian policing of identity”.[6]
The Split
Another intriguing parallel is the importance of the “split” in both movements. Both ETA and the IRA split in the 1970s, and along similar lines.

Some former IRA and ETA activists ended up as the harshest critics of Irish and Basque nationalism[

Eoghan Harris

In both countries, a left-wing faction – the Official IRA and ETA Politico Militar, renounced the use of violence in favour of the primacy of political action. The Official IRA called a ceasefire in 1972 and ETA PM in 1980. Another faction committed to “armed struggle”, respectively the Provisional IRA and ETA Militarra continued their campaigns and eventually became the sole bodies claiming to be the IRA and ETA.
Both the Official Republicans and ETA PM instead concentrated on their political parties, respectively, the Workers’ Party and Euskadiko Ezkerra (“Basque Left”) letting their armed wings fall into abeyance.
The really curious thing is that the WP and EE followed an almost identical path, first rejecting violence, then reviled as traitors by their former comrades, coming to view them, the militarist nationalists, as the main cause of the problem and finally ending up in moderate social democratic parties that rejected not only violence but also the precepts of separatist nationalism.

Mikel Azurmendi

Most of the Workers’ Party activists of the 1980s are now to be found in the Irish Labour Party – some others, notably Eoghan Harris, have actually worked for northern unionist parties, such was their dislike for the Provisionals. Similarly, Euskadiko Ezkerra merged with the Spanish Socialist Party or PSOE in the 1990s. Currently in government in the Basque Autonomous Community, they have outlawed not only Batasuna but also any public act that, “supports or glorifies terrorism”.
Former ETA activists such as Jon Juaristi and Mikel Azurmendi, are now among the harshest critics of Basque nationalism in general. For Azurmendi, the abertzales have fraudulently defined Basque identity entirely as struggle between the “Basque people” and “Spain”; “almost half of my countrymen …believe that being Basque means not being Spanish and it is even more Basque to reject or hate what is Spanish”… “for ETA and HB it means designing an imaginary state of war and acting on it, what they call the ‘armed struggle’”. [7]
Links

The Basque National Day was partly inspired by the Easter Rising

Elli Gallastegi, 'Gudari', who found refuge in Ireland after the Spanish Civil War

If there are philosophical and ideological similarities between Irish and Basque nationalism, there have also been concrete links going back to the 1920s. Such was the admiration of some Basque nationalists for the Easter Rising of 1916 that they located their national day, the Aberri Eguna, on Easter Sunday.
After the fall of the Basque Country in the Spanish Civil War in 1937, nationalist leader Eli Gallastegi, nicknamed Gudari, or “soldier”, was granted asylum in Ireland, where he settled in county Meath until 1958.[8]
Moving on to the 1970s, when both ETA and the Provisional IRA emerged as formidable armed organisations, there has been a long series of contacts between the two movements, including, allegedly, exchanges of weapons, explosives and expertise.
In the 1990s, as their armed wing weakened, ETA launched a campaign of street rioting in the Basque Country known as Kale Borroka (street struggle) – based apparently on admiration for republican street fighters in the nationalist ghettos of Northern Ireland.
In the present day, several ETA and Batasuna activists, fleeing arrest and imprisonment in Spain, including the hunger striker Inaki de Juana Chaos, have found refuge among republicans in Ireland.

Ogra Shinn Fein in the Basque Country

Ogra Shinn Fein, the republican youth movement, make an annual trip the Basque Country to visit Segi, their (now outlawed) opposite numbers..
Peace Processes
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, who is close to people in Batasuna, has urged the Spanish government to respond positively to ETA’s cessation of violence this week. However, the Basque separatists’ ability to benefit from a political process has been severely damaged by their bungled handling of past ceasefires.
In 1998, inspired largely by the Good Friday Agreement, ETA called a permanent ceasefire, only to break it two years later. Again in 2006, the organisation called a “permanent truce”, but again broke it months later with a bomb in Madrid airport. No Spanish government would now dare face the public opprobrium of risking another failed peace process.

It is unthinkable that the Spanish government would say it has “no selfish or strategic interest” in the Basque Country

While the IRA also broke its 1994 ceasefire in 1997, thereafter the Sinn Fein leadership of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness maintained strict and ruthless internal discipline until well into the peace process. The Basque separatist movement has no such clear leadership. Arnaldo Otegi, the leader of Batasuna, is currently imprisoned on charges of “glorifying terrorism” and it is in any case, by no means certain if the political wing of the movement has ever been able to tell the armed wing how to act.

ETA's bomb at Barajas airport that ended thier ceasefire in 2007.

Finally, the Northern Ireland Peace Process had its end result mapped out well in advance – power sharing between nationalists and unionists within an autonomous administration in Northern Ireland. There is no such clear solution to the Basque question.
Part of the historic Basque Country already has extensive autonomy. Self determination of the Basque Country is not something that the Spanish government will permit –nor could it, in any case, legislate for the French Basque provinces. Moreover, while Northern Ireland is a major financial drain on the United Kingdom (up to 70% of the six county economy comes from British public spending), the Basque Country is one of the richest parts of Spain and a net contributor to its tax base.
It is, as Irish journalist Paddy Woodworth has pointed out, simply inconceivable that Spain would say of the Basque Country, as Britain did of Northern Ireland, that it, “has no selfish or strategic interest” there.[9] The best that ETA are likely to get out of any negotiation would appear to be an exchange of arms for the release (or at least repatriation to the Basque Country) of its 800 odd prisoners. For Batasuna (banned in 2001) and the wider separatist movement, legalisation and their return to politics is the short term priority.
Whatever the result of the current phase of politics in the Basque Country and in Ireland, the links between Basque and Irish separatists have proved strong and enduring. There is, as this article has argued, important common ground between the two movements and such links will no doubt continue in the future.
Notes

[1] Desmond Fitzgerald, The Memoirs of Desmond Fitzgerald, p80
[2] Podríamos decir con cierta ironía que es la tenacidad en la lucha

por la libertad la que nos mantiene vascos http://www.uv.es/pla/terrorisme/etamarco.htm
[3] Gara, 6/9/10 http://www.gara.net/paperezkoa/20100906/219143/eu/Euskadi-Ta-Askatasunaren-agiria-Euskal-Herriari
[4] Mar-Molinero, Clare, Smith, Angel, Nationalism and the Nation in the Iberian Peninsula, Berg, Oxford 1996. page 213
[5] Ernie O’Malley, On Another Man’s Wound, p370
[6] Aretxaga, Begona, (2005), States of Terror, Begona Aretxaga’s Essays, University of Nevada. P246
[7] Mikel Azurmendi, La Herrida Patriotica, 1998, p64-66.
[8] For Basque–Irish links in the early 20^th century, see Daniel Leach, Fugitive Ireland, European minority nationalists and Irish Political Asylum, p52-58
[9] Paddy Woodworth, Why Do they Kill?, The Basque Conflict in Spain, World Policy Journal April 2001 http://www.allbusiness.com/public-administration/national-security-international/896365-1.html

THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE - AND THEY KNOW IT!

2010-09-11T09:41:00.004+01:00

This article was taken from Mary Lou McDonald's Blog. A blog which is always well worth a read.

http://maryloumcdonald.blogspot.com/

There is an alternative to this rotten government

Each year Sinn Féin presents to government the party’s pre-Budget submission. As Ireland’s fortunes have changed significantly over the last two years December’s budget has become an important day of the year, particularly for the least well off in our society as they face cuts in critical supports and services and the double whammy of an increase in inequitable stealth taxes.

Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats’ right wing agenda coupled with their fiscal recklessness during Ireland’s boom years hardened the collapse of our economy. The Green’s have compounded the states public finance deficit and double-digit unemployment figures by signing off on Fianna Fáil’s golden circle policy approach. Or maybe they have just found their political home in a Fianna Fáil led government!

Fianna Fáil was so beholden to those within it golden circle it decided to nationalise the worst bank in the history of the state. Anglo Irish Bank has cost the Irish people 22 billion euro to date with rating agency Standard Poor’s recently estimating that the total cost of bailing out the bank will rise to 35 billion euro.

But it is not enough for those of us in political opposition to bemoan the horrific failings of this government; we need to present our political and fiscal alternatives to the people. And that is what we in Sinn Fein have done each year with a particular focus on job creation since the collapse of the economy in 2008. We are currently working on our Budget 2011 submission, which will be published and submitted to government in advance of budget day on December 7th.

Click on the below links to download Sinn Féin Job Creation strategy document and our 2010 Budget submission to government. In these document’s you will find sensible viable alternatives to the government’s budget decisions including a range of tax revenue measures and proposals to address wasteful spending of public monies.

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0Bwa0F8Eb46geNzE3MmQzZjQtYTIyZi00OWU1LTkwZjctYTMwMzJhMzk3YmJh&hl=en

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0Bwa0F8Eb46geODE1MzViNGQtNDExZi00ZjdkLWI2OGQtODg2ODdhNzYzZGZk&hl=en

Westminister's Decades Long Campaign to defeat Nationalism

2010-09-11T09:00:00.000+01:00

The Tory and Labour Governments of Westminister have waged a decades long struggle to defeat nationalism: Scottish nationalism.

BBC Alba covers the many tricks, strategems and mistruths employed by Westminister to keep the union intact.

Only our Scottish comrades could provide comment on this but I wonder have the english language BBC ever ran such a documentary - a documentary on how the UK govt. lied to the Scots.

I think of RTE and the contrasting example of TG4 which ran that fantastic series on prison breaks, including the Great Escape. RTE could never, would never (in its current form) run such a broadcast.

Its a 6 part series but worth a look.

The local economy - relying on We Ourselves rather than the Government.

2010-09-09T13:32:00.001+01:00

The underwhelming approach of the Government continues to damage sth Ireland terribly. Brian Cowen may believe the spiking of the interest rate on 10-year Irish bonds to over 6% - Greek style rates was a blip. Its not. Its how lenders view our long term ability to repay debt and a vote of no-confidence in the Govt. handling of the crisis. Commentators from every quarter are now bemoaning the economic failures of the Dept. of Finance who are changing the plans again for Anglo Irish. We wont even know the full cost of the Anglo Irish bank crisis until next month. A never ending evasion of responsibility, especially to Leinster house and tax payers as noted by Arthur Morgan. Brian Lenihan said the high yield rates were a result of our transparent policies. The tax payers never sees those transparent policies.

So what does all this mean in real terms. By 2013 for every 4 euros to spend on the economy 1 euro will be spent on interest payments abroad

For those of us still working one day a week will be worked not for the benefit of the Irish economy but to pay for the Developers and Fianna Fail's gambling.

As has been noted in many places we will need to raise our levels of production. We need to get people off the dole ques and into jobs. The scale of the task is huge - hundreds of thousand of jobs lost must be replaced.

How are we going to do this? Well there are job creation strategies put forward but not implemented by Fianna Fail and additionally there are good ideas on helping young entrepreneurs strategies bring jobs back into local communities.

Look at Munster Rugby who now gets all its juice shakes from a small local company in Limerick. A small company employing 6-7 people set up by a man who gained experience with multi-nationals and used that experience to create jobs in rural Ireland. Jobs that dont depend on decisions made in America or wont relocate at the drop of a hat.

Instead there has been a Govt. led over-reliance on the promise of multi-nationals, to the neglect of more balanced development of the economy, and the high value knowledge economy. The problem with this is jobs from medical devices, financial services, digital media etc will be overwhelmingly urban based and likely to cluster around the largest towns and cities. Large swathes of the countryside will remain in economic decline.

Boosting the rate of young entrepreneurship will be a valuable way of getting jobs into small towns, the country side and housing estates which may be left behind. It will help to stem the decline of rural Ireland and revitalise urban Ireland.

Back in 1995 an academic from Galway University published a paper called "Desertification: Measuring population decline in rural Ireland". My own local region was one of those communities marked for a slow painful death - we were just far enough away from the major urban centers to be isolated rather than included.

The Celtic Tiger didnt solve the problems of rural decline and economic imbalances - it papered over them. The Celtic Tiger didnt end poverty in Ireland - it simply ignored it. Witness the recent report on poverty by the ESRI:16% in 2007 - before the bubble burst. A fifth of young children at risk of falling below the breadline with 7pc of them in consistent poverty.

Even harder for lone parents - "In 2004, children in lone parent families accounted for 53pc of children in consistent poverty, while in 2007, 65pc of children in consistent poverty were in such families". But lone parents in the south are excluded from the economic life of the stated by an Irish childcare system thats not fit for purpose despite a decade to make it so.

How many skilled young people will emigrate and create good jobs in other countries. How many would stay here and create those jobs in rural and urban Ireland if given the support and opportunity to create new businesses - the type of support laid out by Sinn Fein. Businesses which would save local communities from dying, and help the most marginalised in Irish society share in any future economic growth.

Fianna Fail should view the emigration of every Irish worker not as one less dole payment but six less jobs.

Fianna Fail's mindset is the mindset of the past. In order to save our communities the electorate must consign them to them past.

Raising the Red Flag at the Rotunda. The workers occupation of January 1922.

2010-09-07T18:57:00.000+01:00

The seizure of the Rotunda concert hall by a reasonably large group of unemployed workers, and the hoisting of the red flag over the premises, remains one of the most bizarre and understudied events of the Irish revolutionary period.

The story of this event is enjoyably recounted on the Come Here to Me website which covers the political, social, and radical history of Baile Atha Cliath. The article is reproduced with the kind permission of the author. Go raibh maith agat Donal.

The seizure of the Rotunda by unemployed people had as one of its leaders a man called Liam o'Flaherty who like many unemployed was in an Irish unit of the British army in WW1 before entering radical left politics, the Citzen Army and eventually seeing action with the anti-treaty forces in the civil war.

In his excellent history of the ITGWU, The Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union: The Formative Years C. Desmond Greaves wrote that, early in 1922 “….industrial conflict took the form of individual struggles rather than a concerted class war.” The occupation of the Rotunda came two days after the foundation of the new state, and was perhaps the earliest example of class anger within it, a direct response to the existing high levels of unemployment. One of the leading figures of this occupation was Liam O’ Flaherty, today well-known as the author of The Informer, the classic novel, but then acting as a dedicated socialist.

He, like so many other unemployed men in Dublin, had served in the Great War, serving with the Irish Guards. He had been on a strange journey before returning to Dublin, and Emmet O’ Connor notes in Reds and the Greens that “After being invalided out of the British Army he set off trampling about the Mediterranean and the Americas, joining the Wobblies in Canada and the Communist Party in New York. He returned to settle in Ireland in December 1921….”

On January 18 1922, a group of unemployed Dublin workers seized the concert hall of the Rotunda. The Irish Times of the following day noted that:

“The unemployed in Dublin have seized the concert room at the Rotunda, and they declare that they will hold that part of the building until they are removed, as a protest against the apathy of the authorities.”

“A ‘garrison’, divided into ‘companies’, each with its ‘officers’ has been formed, and from one of the windows the red flag flies”

Liam O’ Flaherty, as chairman of the ‘Council of Unemployed’, spoke to the paper about the refusal of the men to leave the premises, stating that no physical resistance would be put up against the police and that the protest was a peaceful one, yet they intended to stay where they were.

“If we were taken to court, we would not recognise the court, because the Government that does not redress our grievances is not worth recognising” O’ Flaherty told the Times.

A manifesto was issued by the occupiers, the first publication of O’ Flaherty. O’ Connor notes in his study that “Their manifesto was O’ Flaherty’s first publication. One could say that Phelan (A reference to a CPI comrade of O’ Flaherty, Jim Phelan) was impressed. ‘It’s language has not, I think, been approached since the days of the American War of Independence and the first French Revolution’ “

A later Irish Times report gives some idea of the level of organisation involved in such an occupation. On January 20 the paper noted that a man had been court martialed and reduced to the ranks. “…we reduced him to the ranks for disobeying orders” the paper quoted the “leader of the men” as saying. By that stage, two days into the occupation, around 200 men were present.

The paper noted a maintainance fund had been established, with Bolands bakery on Capel Street making a grant of 500 loaves to the men. The paper also noted that sporadic concerts had taken place inside the occupation, and that “A meeting of the unemployed was held during the day yesterday, and the “garrison” paraded Parnell Square”.

Of course, many Dubliners were extremely hostile to the sight of the red flag in Dublin. Angry demonstrations occurred each night during the occupation, and the Irish Independent noted (January 21) that “About 8.30 last night a hostile crowd of about 500 assembled in Cavendish Row, and indulged in shouts and derisive cheers. About 10pm a young fellow made an attempt to reach the red flag hung out from a window, but fell to the ground. He was taken to Jervis St. Hospital, but he was not detained.” When the flag was removed, the crowd cheered loudly.It was only thanks to the Dublin Metropolitan Police and the Republican Police that those inside the Rotunda were unharmed, as the crowd stormed the building. It was becoming clear the occupation was not sustainable. On the Thursday night, a member of the occupying group had been attacked collecting money near the premises, and since then tensions had been high.

The occupation, which had begun on Wednesday, was to end late on Saturday night. As the hatred outside intensified, shots were fired over the heads of the mob from inside the hall. Just before midnight, and under the protection of the combined police forces, the occupiers left the building and the crowd soon departed without incident. O’ Flaherty took off for Cork.

The Gate Theatre, site of the occupation today.

O’ Flaherty would later fight in the Irish Civil War, one of the socialists present in Vaughan’s Hotel, a republican seizure of note owing to the fact it was a favourite meeting place of a certain Michael Collins during the War of Independence! O’ Flaherty is not the only Irish writer of note to have partaken in the Civil War of course, with Sean O’ Faoláin just one other example. The early parts of 1922 saw much industrial unrest, and a number of creameries in the south of Ireland were sized in May. Greaves noted in his prior mentioned study of the history of the ITGWU that the Labour Party and TUC had attempted to “…ensure the neutrality of the Citizen Army by incorporating it into a ‘Workers Army’ that would cover the whole country….But no army can fight for neutrality, and the project soon fell through”

Still, the physical battles between two armed factions and the class conflict remained more or less disconnected from one another. An editorial in the Workers Republic, printed on July 22 1922, noted
“What will attract the masses to support the Republicans? At present, they cannot see any benefit in fighting for it! At present the Free State offers them more economic and social advantages. At the moment it seems as if the Labour Party, representative of the masses, can find its salvation in the Free State rather than in the Republic”

Liam Mellows, perhaps the republican figure who fought hardest for republicanism to add a real social dimension to its goals, was to be executed in a hail of bullets. His now famous prison notes noted that “In our efforts now to win back public support to the Republic we are forced to recognise whether we like it or not- that the commercial interest, so-called, money and the gombeen men are on the side of the Treaty”

The occupation of the Rotunda remains an often overlooked piece of the history of the period. Before Mellows penned the above, O’ Flaherty and a small band of followers had demanded a Workers Republic, and nothing short thereof. In Irish history, the Rotunda is seen as being of great importance as the site of the foundation of the Irish Volunteers. Sadly, no plaque marks the workers occupation of the site in 1922.

Euskadi Ta Askatasuna announce ceasfire

2010-09-05T14:59:00.003+01:00

Responding to a call made last Friday by the Basque political parties Batasuna and Eusko Alkartasuna, ETA has announced a new initiative to resolve the conflict in Euskal Herria.

In a statement spokespersons for ETA confirmed "its commitment to finding a democratic solution to the conflict".

"In its commitment to a democratic process to decide freely and democratically our future, through dialogue and negotiations, Eta is prepared today as yesterday to agree to the minimum democratic conditions necessary to put in motion a democratic process, if the Spanish government is willing,"

"We call on all Basque citizens to continue in the struggle, each in their own field, with whatever degree of commitment they have, so that we can all cast down the wall of denial and make irreversible moves forward on the road to freedom."

Commenting on the Basque Ceasefire events Gerry said 'This is a significant statement and has the potential to bring about a permanent end to the long-running conflict in the Basque country. Its now vital that the Spanish government respond positively and grasp the opportunity'.

There is a regrettable mindset in Spanish political circles which believes that the more people they imprison or the more activists like Jon Anza who disappear only to reappear after many months in a morgue then the more progress is made in resolving the conflict.

They are wrong. The only way forward is inclusive political negotiations. Lets hope they take that step.

An unbroken chain - The escape of Vol. Tom Malone from Spike in 1921

2010-09-01T20:20:00.003+01:00

At age 8 Tom Malone from Westmeath stood on a land league platform with Davitt. His mother was dismissed from her school job for teaching Irish. He was out in 1916, and went on to become a key Volunteer in the Tan war and throughout the 30s. In 1921 Vol. Tom Malone and two comrades audaciously escaped from Spike Island, becoming the first to do so.

As we approach the 27th anniversary of the Great Escape planned by Volunteers in the north of our country it is fitting to consider 3 volunteers in the south of our country who performed an equally daring escape.

An unbroken chain, an unbroken tradition, linking many generations in one continous struggle.

The story of Tom Malone

Video Part 1

Video Part 2:

Video Part3:

Limerick - One story but indicative of whats happening across Rural Ireland.

2010-09-01T11:57:00.006+01:00

Just read this on Breakingnews and for me, just like the Seamus Sherlock story, it sums up how rural Ireland is going to be doubly battered - by the recession and the Govt. response.

"A Limerick man has had to close his family business of 121 years and emigrate to Australia because of the recession and is adamant that he will never return to Ireland.

Forty-seven-year-old Declan Murphy has said he was forced to close Murphy and Son Menswear in Newcastle West - a business which first opened its doors in 1889.

1889 is one year before Michael Collins was even born. Minister of Finance Brian Lenihan is a student of history. He should appreciate that while that business survived land wars, world wars, guerilla war and civil war it didnt survive his administration.

Father of three Declan Murphy said he can no longer support his family with the business and has made the difficult decision to emigrate."

Both Rural and Urban Ireland are going to get it in the neck. I am not saying its better in one place or the other. Rural and Urban Ireland will be affected in similar and also different ways. A town smaller than Newcastle West may not have the critical mass required to even launch new shops and establish alternative providers, that large population centers will have. Larger population centers may well have the critical mass but they too will face unique problems and hardships associated with an urban context.

NewcastleWest town has a population of about 11000. In the Social Welfare office in the town there are 3,739 people now registered - people from the town and its wider economic hinterland. This is replicated across rural Ireland - urban centers being stripped of amenities and services while their hinterlands enter into a particularly severe economic decline.

Its sad to think that soon in rural Ireland there will be many towns with no post office, no bank, no clothes shops, no jobs and no amenities, even no Gaelic football teams, no hospitals nearby. The sheer breadth of the assault being carried out on rural Ireland is awe inspiring. The last budget also targetted rural Ireland harshly.

During the Tan War the enemy army tried to destroy rural areas of resistance by burning towns and destroying centres of economic activity - to break the backbone of small communities. They didnt succeed but Fianna Fail might just - they have a lot done and more to do.

Save the banks but lose a generation - Why Fianna Fail's approach wont work!

2010-08-30T12:44:00.000+01:00

At the ‘Reclaim the City’ rally in Dublin Cllr. Dessie Ellis challenged the idea that there is no alternative to the current economic mis-strategy. Dessie's speech goes to the heart of the crisis and the needed response. Are we trying to save and rebuild Irish society and an economy to support it or do we just save the economy while Irish society is hollowed out.

A few days ago, organised by the Right to Work Campaign, Sinn Féin Councillor Dessie Ellis said Fianna Fáil cannot claim any economic competence when they are complacently presiding over increasing unemployment.

Councillor Ellis said the biggest lie from the Coalition Government is that there is no alternative to the savage cutbacks and mass unemployment.

Dessie said: “Fianna Fáil cannot claim any economic competence when they are complacently presiding over increasing unemployment. The government is determined to slash public services and put even more people on the dole. Unemployment is not a price worth paying for a negligent Government – it destroys lives and leaves permanent scars on our communities. What this Government fails to accept is that behind every statistic is a personal tragedy.

“Current policy seems to consist of attacking those on low wages and social welfare. This is not just a short sighted policy, it is an anti social one. We are told we need to tighten our belts, cut back, have a lower standard of living while the government bends over backwards to bail out bankers and big business.

"Indeed the greatest contribution of some of our own native entrepreneurs was to piggyback on the genuine growth in the economy by charging us exorbitant amounts for everything from mortgages to rents to pints of lager and paninis while being careful at the same time to ensure that they paid as little tax or wages as possible.

“And these are the patriots whose bacon the so-called ‘Republican Party’ is proposing to save by imposing a massive drop in living standards on the decent people of this country, whose only crime was to work when there was work and suffer the indignity of unemployment when the work was gone.

“However the biggest lie in all of this is that there is no alternative to the cutbacks and the mass unemployment. There is an alternative, SF’s proposals on tackling youth unemployment costed at €1.316 billion would create at least 50,000 jobs.

“Now 1.3 billion might sound like a lot of money but if we compare that to the 25 billion that is being pumped into Anglo, the private piggy bank of some of the most corrupt figures of this State, we can clearly see where the Government’s priorities lie. If the same amount was diverted into Sinn Féin’s job creation package, our proposals could support nearly 1 million jobs.

“In one month, 2938 young people under 25 signed on – the equivalent of nearly 100 people a day. This figure is further dwarfed by the thousands of young people who emigrated from Ireland because this Government are only able to secure jobs for their political and banking cronies.

“We need to make employment a reality for people outside the golden circle.”

Thank God almighty free at last.

2010-08-28T09:00:00.004+01:00

On 28th of August 1963 - Martin Luther King gave his famous speech demanding that the opportunity and rights promised by the American Republic's founding fathers be extended to all its citizens irregardless. They had made a promise to Americans about what that Republic would mean and King intended to see it fulfilled.

One of the great speeches of history. At 17:28 mins long it is without doubt worth watching every minute.

Martin Luther King

Welcome Ma'am. Hope you'll take the time to apologise.

2010-08-27T22:38:00.002+01:00

Welcome Ma'am your
subjects await

Considering the southern part of Ireland is likely to have a visit soon from Elizabeth Windsor then its time to have another quick look at the Windsors and their illustrious history.

If Elizabeth lands in Dublin then it wont be the first time she has been to Ireland. The Irish Times and other southern media jobbers should keep that in mind. Its nothing new thats she visits Ireland cause well she has been here many times already.

The Times, and others, will ram home the message that anyone who is not over the moon about her visit is against peace and reconcilliation. Nothing could be further from the truth. The English royal family is an anachronism. Its illegal to even call for their abolition and its illegal to marry a papist and keep the job. Great example eh!

There are many valid reasons to oppose her visit - the institutionalised sectarianism, the claim to sovereignty to part of our country, her role as commander in chief of an army that brutalised so many communities etc.

None of this will influence the Irish Times or the other excitable types in south Ireland. They'll fawn and preen and lose all sense of dignity as they try to impress upon us that they are not embarassing themselves but instead are broad minded progressives.

The thing is she is going to come to the south. Its going to happen. I dont like it but she has visited other parts of the country and she'll end up on a visit to Dublin as well.

Whats really going to turn the stomach is how so many in the south will lose all sense of dignity and self-respect and then tell everyone else that they are being broadminded and progressive. Thats not reconcillation or building a new relationships. Nobody is working harder to build new relationships than Republicans. The Irish Times should bear that in mind. If they want to welcome Elizabeth Windsor prematurely thats their business but they should not lose the run of themselves and start recruiting again for the British army again - their most recent relationship building exercise.

A few years back Peter Berresford Ellis explored the origins of the fake House of ‘Windsor’ and highlighted some of the more questionable links between the British royals on the Irish Democrat and their German family counterparts. They are quite a family to say the least:

NOW WE are heading for the jubilee of the accession to the throne of Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, ‘Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth’. And there’s not a protocol cloud in the sky.

I’m told that the departure from the cares of this world of the Queen Mother came as somewhat opportune for the royal protocol watchers. Any later departure might have resulted in the cancellation of the jubilee celebrations. It was rather like the relief that was expressed when old Queen Mary died in 1953 at an appropriate time for the mourning to have finished in order to allow the coronation celebrations to take place in June. Tricky stuff, these royal protocols.

Perhaps I should not mention my political views on the subject of that family as the Treason Felony Act of 1848 is still in force in the United Kingdom. This means that if anyone advocates the abolition of the monarchy, even by peaceful means, they can wind up being imprisoned for life.

Last October, in the House of Lords no less, Lord Greaves asked Lord Rooker, minister of state at the Home Office, whether the government planned to repeal that outmoded piece of legislation and was told: “We have no plans at present to repeal the Act”.

Kevin McNamara MP tried to introduce a bill last year in the House of Commons, which sought to amend section three making it no longer a criminal offence to advocate the abolition of the monarchy by peaceful means. He failed. And when The Guardian newspaper tried to get a judgement on the matter in the High Court they were told that Britain still maintains the right of punishing people with life imprisonment for advocating a republic, whether in writing, broadcasting or through other means.

People in these islands are generally confused about this family who so affects all our lives. Most people even believe that the current royals are direct descendants of every monarch that has sat on the throne of England. It’s interesting that the ‘English monarchy’ has rarely been English but it is amazing how jingoistic the English are about these economic-immigrants that reign over them.

The fact is that the current royal family is the product of a series of political decisions rather than being ordained to its position by natural descent. No, I won’t mention Willem van Oranje, Count of Nassau-Dillenburg, Stadholder of the United Provinces, who became William III and caused Ireland so much grief.

In 1714 the English government invited Georg von Braunschweig-Länberg to be King of Great Britain and Ireland. Georg was Duke and Elector of Hanover. He was made George I because he was a Protestant -— the idea being to prevent a Catholic coming to the throne even if they had a better successional claim.

Georg’s mother was Sophia Wittelsbach, and her mother, in turn, was Elizabeth, daughter of James I, who had married Friedrich V, King of Bohemia. Thus royal watchers could claim a distant female link to the Stuart dynasty.

The von Braunschweig-Länberg family settled in and to help the natives — because von Braunschweig-Länberg is a wee bit difficult to pronounce —- they became the Hanoverian dynasty. However, Georg spent most of his time in Hanover where he died in 1727. He never learnt English and his cabinet had to discuss matters with him in French.

George II had been born in Hanover but, aged 17, he learnt English, and sometimes translated for his family. George III was the first of the Hanoverians to actually be born in England but he suffered periods of royal insanity and the then undiagnosed disease of prophyria.

None of the first three Hanoverian kings bothered to visit Scotland, Wales or Ireland. The dynasty also maintained its German cultural background. From 1714 through to 1901 the kings always married to a German spouse and ensured that every ‘English’ king had a German born mother and a German-speaking father. German was the natural language of the court. When Victoria came to the throne, while she spoke English, German was her language of preference. She was, of course, mother to an Empress of Germany, grandmother to the Kaiser Wilhelm, mother of the Grand Duchess of Hesse and to the countess von Battenberg —- matriarch to a regiment of European kings, queens and other royals.

The dynasty of von Braunschweig-Länberg remained until Victoria married a German cousin. His name Albrecht von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha.

Victoria, unlike Elizabeth II, was traditional enough to adopt the name of her husband. Thus in 1840 Victoria became the head of the new dynasty of Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha.

In 1914 George Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha (George V) found himself declaring war on his first cousin Wilhelm Hohenzollern (Kaiser Wilhelm) much to the distress of his consort Mary von Teck. Some might remember old Queen Mary who died in 1953 who was not allowed to speak in public due to her rather awkward German English.

The first sacrifice of the family was Prince Louis von Battenberg, a cousin, married to Victoria von Hesse und Rhine. He had to resign his position as first lord of the Admiralty in October, 1914. One couldn’t have a German in charge of the English Navy fighting the Germans could one?

Prince Louis also felt it expedient to change his name to ‘Mountbatten’ in 1917, when English war casualties were mounting and feelings were running high against those who a younger and more radical Lloyd-George had once denounced as ‘princes —- no better than German half-breeds!’

George Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha thought his cousin had found a great answer to the problem that had arisen. The natives had become confused at being told it was their patriotic duty to fight for one branch of a German family against another branch of a German family. The problem was compounded by the fact that Londoners and citizens in the Home Counties were being bombed by a German aircraft bearing the name of their royal family —- the Gotha!

A brilliant idea -— the Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha family would become the Windsor family.

Cousin Willie in Berlin (the German kaiser) thought it a bit of a laugh. He made one of his rare jokes telling his staff that he wanted to go to the theatre to see a performance of The Merry Wives of Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha. His grandmother might not have been amused.

The newly invented Windsor family managed to survive the family fracas of 1914-18. But there were continuing problems resulting from the rise of Adolf Hitler. Members of the family were joining the Nazi Party. Some even joined the SS.

A cousin — Philip von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg —- whose parents had tried to pass as Greeks in order to sit on the Greek throne but had been kicked out in 1922 —- came to the UK in 1937.

This could have been a recipe for disaster. Philip had been educated in Germany near Lake Konstanz; a place called Schloss Salem, founded by Prince Max von Baden and Kurt Hahn. It was based on the Nazi’s educational philosophy. Hahn initially supported the Nazis until it was discovered he had some Jewish ancestry whereupon he left for Scotland.

Philip’s sister had married a cousin, Prince Christoph of Hesse. Prince Christoph had joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and by 1935 was a standartenführer (colonel) of the SS on the personal staff of Heinrich Himmler and chief of the forschungsamt (directorate of scientific research) —- in reality a special intelligence operation using new electronic intelligence gathering methods.

Their son was named Karl Adolf after Hitler and Philip afterwards took a keen educational interest in his nephew.

Perhaps the family was spared some embarrassment when the Prince of Hesse was killed on active service in 1943. His sister was killed in an Allied bombing raid.

Another of Philip’s sisters Cecilia was married to Georg Donatus, Grand Duke of Hesse-by-Rhine, also a great-grandson of Queen Victoria. They died when the Luftwaffe Junker aircraft, personally supplied by Herman Göring to allow them to attend Georg’s brother’s wedding, crashed.

Another relative of Philip was the Prussian Prince Bernhard von Lippe who joined the Nazis while studying at the University of Berlin in 1934 and worked openly in the motorised SS.

According to Newsweek (April 5, 1976) it was known that Prince Bernhard was a member of a special SS intelligence unit in IG Farben and this had originally been pointed out in testimony at the Nuremberg trials.

Bernhard resigned from the SS, in 1937, when he married the future Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. Adolf Hitler forwarded a congratulatory message though Bernhard, who became a naturalised Dutchman

Philip and Bernhard remained not just distant relatives but close friends and in October, 1961, founded the World Wildlife Fund. Prince Philip rather ruined his image more recently when, doubtless filled with nostalgia for his days at Schloss Salem, he told a journalist that he hoped to be ‘reincarnated as a deadly virus’ to solve ‘population problems’ in the world.

Prince Bernhard was forced from public office in 1971, of course, not for his politics but over the financial mis-dealings known as the Lockheed scandal.

At the age of sixteen, in November, 1937, Philip joined his former headmaster Kurt Hahn in Scotland where he had established a new school called Gordonstoun. Hahn was also advising the UK Foreign Office on German affairs and urging a policy of appeasement based on appeals to ‘centrist’ Nazis.

Things were upset when, in spite of the strong appeasement lobby among the English establishment, England and Germany went to war again. What’s more Hitler had developed a plan to invade England and replace George VI with his older brother Edward (who had abdicated in 1936). Edward was much more amenable to Adolf and his ideas. Philip, who had just joined the Royal Navy, was told to change his name to that of his uncle —- not von Battenburg but Mountbatten.

The royal family, all branches, kept in touch throughout the war. The ‘post-box’ seemed to be through Sweden where Mountbatten had a sister Louise who was crown princess of Sweden. Through this back channel all the German royals, in England and Germany, kept in close communication.

The family has been keen to depict this wartime collaboration between ‘enemies’ as merely family correspondence. Yet when Kronberg Castle fell to the Americans the royals were in panic. This was the home of Prince Philip’s sister Sophie and her SS husband, Prince Christoph. In June, 1945, George VI, despatched a former MI5 officer to Kronberg to ensure all the correspondence was gathered up and brought to the safety to Windsor Castle.

The intelligence man entrusted with the job was Sir Anthony Blunt, later rewarded as ‘Keeper of the King’s Paintings’. When he was arrested in 1979 and interrogated by MI5, having been revealed as a Soviet agent, Elizabeth II insisted that there should be no interrogation of Blunt about his secret trip to Kronberg.

The family was desperate to keep these documents secret. Clearly, they had not just been sending Christmas Cards to one another.

The royals weathered the storm. Even Edward (Duke of Windsor) was publicly exonerated in the 1950s in spite of the revelation by former SS Oberführer Walter Schellenberg, head of counter-intelligence, whose job was to help put Hitler’s plans for the Duke into operation. Prince Philip finally married Princess Elizabeth in 1947 and she became Queen Elizabeth II in 1952 —- the coronation was in 1953.

So why aren’t the Windsors called the Mountbattens —- let alone the von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksbergs?

Poor old Philip had to accept that his children would bear the name of his wife’s father and not his —- well, the Windsor name, that is, not Sachsen-Coburg Gotha. Philip had gone so far as to become a naturalised British subject as ‘Philip Mountbatten’ on February 28, 1947, but to no avail.

I suppose the royal names have been changed so much that it really doesn’t matter. But he was not even allowed to officially be called ‘Prince’ Philip until February 22, 1957. Whether they be German or English, Irish or Scots, Welsh or Manx or Cornish, I really can’t see why I should pay any deference to a family whose sole claim to assume their modern station in life is that their ancestors were better thieves and robbers than my ancestors.

Come to that, ancestors apart, the recent generations appear to have kept up family traditions. Roll on a true egalitarian social democracy and if you don’t hear further from me, you’ll know the 1848 Act is still taken pretty seriously in the UK.

Michael Collins versus Brian Lenihan

2010-08-22T19:00:00.005+01:00

The legacy of Michael Collins is much argued over in sth Ireland. He became a totem pole and a lighning rod for political parties who used him to champion their positions while ignoring the great many divergences between his vision for Ireland (all of it) and the Ireland Fine Gael and Fianna Fail constructed.

Today is of course the anniversary that Michael Collins was killed in action at Béal na mBláth. Brian Lenihan, the fiscal taskmasters right hand man, today gave a speech at that location.

As you can imagine there was much nonsense in the media about how this was the polar opposite of what Michael Collins stood for.

Well lets look at a speech from Michael Collins written the month he died.

We will see that the state that Fine Gael and Fianna Fail built was the polar opposite of what Michael Collins could have imagined. Brian Lenihan opined that if Collins had not died then maybe he would have formed a new party pre-empting FF. This is not as fanciful as it may seem. The vision Collins had for the country as laid out below was very different from the attitudes of the CnaG govt. which thought people starving in Ireland due to unemployment was a tolerable economic situation.

In a paper called the "Building up Ireland - Resources to be developed" Collins laid out a plan for Ireland that would have brought him into definite conflict with the men who would eventually set up Cumann na nGaedhael. Equally the socio-economic vision he had for the whole country is hugely at odds with the utopian hippy fantasy of deValera or the gombeenism of the Haughey-Ahern-Cowen years.

The uses of wealth are to provide good health, comfort, moderate luxury, and to give the freedom which comes from the possession of these things. Our object in building up the country economically must not be lost sight of. That object is not to be able to boast of enormous wealth or of a great volume of trade, for their own sake. It is not to see our countrycovered with smoking chimneys and factories. It is not to show a great national balance-sheet, nor to point to a people producing wealth with the self-obliteration of a hive of bees.

Brian Lenihan believes the uses of wealth is for bailing out banks and buddies.

If our national economy is put on a sound footing from the beginning it will, in the new Ireland, be possible for our people to provide themselves with the ordinary requirements of decent living. It will be possible for each to have sufficient food, a good home in which to live in fair comfort and contentment. We shall be able to give our children bodily and mental health; and our people will be able to secure themselves against the inevitable times of sickness and old age. That must be our object.

In today's Ireland we cannot assure contentment in any home. Negative equity and unemployment has seen to that. We cannot guarantee the health of children who die in the care of our health boards while our old fear Irish hospitals because it can kill rather than cure them.

What we must aim at is the building up of a sound economic life in which great discrepancies cannot occur. We must not have the destitution of poverty at one end, and at the other an excess of riches in the possession of a few individuals, beyond what they can spend with satisfaction and justification. Millionaires can spend their surplus wealth bestowing libraries broadcast upon the world. But who will say that the benefits accruing could compare with those arising from a condition of things in which the people themselves everywhere, in the city, town, and village, were prosperous enough to buy their own books and to put together their own local libraries in which they could take a personal interest and acquire knowledge in proportion to that interest?

After the Cumann na nGaedhael there were actually more people in tenant housing. Both parties failed to provide the infrastructure of a modern state across the south. Today Fianna Fail is still failing but if it were Fine Gael their paucity of vision would mean it would be no different. Michael McDowell a man who worked with Fianna Fail and wants to rejoin Fine Gael believed that such inequality was the bedrock of prosperity.

The keynote to the economic revival must be development of Irish resources by Irish capital for the benefit of the Irish consumer in such a way that the people have steady work at just remuneration and their own share of control.Investors must be urged and encouraged to invest Irish capital in Irish concerns[...]We shall hope to see in Ireland industrial conciliation and arbitration taking the place of strikes, and the workers sharing in the ownership and management of businesses.

On that charge alone both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail have failed spectacularly. Now we develop Irish resources fot the benefit of soverign debt funds. Workers having a share in the ownership of businesses - instead we have a state where workers subsidise developers and the banks own businesses from golf courses to hotels to even selling tractors.

Taxation, where it hinders, must be adjusted, and must be imposed where the burden will fall lightest and can best be borne, and where it will encourage rather than discourage industry.

So much for Lenihan's last budget then.

We have now in Ireland, owing to the restrictions put upon emigration during the European war, a larger population of young men and women than we have had for a great many years. For their own sake and to maintain the strength of the nation room must and can be found for them.

Well room cant be made for them. This island is too small for all of us. Brian Lenihan today is pushing deflationary policies that are forcing people to emigrate.

The development of mines and minerals will be on national lines, and under national direction. This will prevent the monopoly by private individuals of what are purely national resources belonging to all the people of the nation. The profits from all these national enterprises – the working of mines, development of water-power, etc. – will belong to the nation for the advantage of the whole nation. But Irish men and women as private individuals must do their share to increase the prosperity of the country. Business cannot succeed without capital. Millions of Irish money are lying idle in banks. The deposits in Irish joint stock banks increased in the aggregate by £7,318,000 during the half-year ended December 31, 1921. At that date the total of deposits and cash balances in the Irish banks was £194,391,000, to which in addition there was a sum of almost £14,000,000 in the Post Office Savings Bank. If Irish money were invested in Irish industries, to assist existing ones, and to finance new enterprises, there would be an enormous development of Irish commerce. The Irish people have a large amount of capital invested abroad. With scope for our energies, with restoration of confidence, the inevitable tendency will be towards return of this capital to Ireland. It will then flow in its proper channel. It will be used for opening up new and promising fields in this country.

A telling passage. Under Fianna Fail billions of borrowed euros were invested to build houses in Bulgaria, London etc etc. Cumann na nGaedhael set up an Agricultural Credit Corporation but never managed to set up an Industrial Credit Corporation [eventually becoming Bank of Scotland(Ireland) which last week pulled up sticks from the south]. One of the strange things about Ireland in the 30s-50s was the almost fatalistic belief that Ireland was destined to be always an agricultural country and that any attempt to industrialise was to try to reach above our station. Brian Lenihan's Fianna Fail thought that construction was the new farming. At least Collins had the vision to think otherwise. In that he again is the polar opposite of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.

Finally Collins ndid not forgot one key point.

He believed that "A prosperous Ireland will mean a united Ireland. With equitable taxation and flourishing trade our North-East countrymen will need no persuasion to come in and share in the healthy economic life of the country."

How very un-Fine Gael of him.

Which begs the question how do Republicans see Collins today? Republican Ireland has never forgotten its patriot dead. It has always remembered the names of Mellows, Sands, Pearse, Farrell, Connolly, Hughes, Tone, Burns, Lynch and Moley and all the many others with pride.

How does Collins fit into Irish history today for Republicans? Certainly he is not in the same vein as o'Higgins or DeValera. Is he friend, foe or like people note on facebook is the relationship complex?

De-electrification - Seamus Sherlock takes a stand against ESB bureacracy.

2010-08-18T22:12:00.006+01:00

Seamus Sherlock campaigns

against ESB

Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh and other party activists today lend their support to Seamus Sherlock who is being threatened with disconnection by the ESB despite making efforts to pay outstanding debts. Seamas chained himself to the railings of ESB headquarters in Dublin. [Seamus Sherlock is now carrying his campaign to Facebook - so give him some support there. I am sure it will mean a lot to him]

Seamus is unemployed and has a family to support. The total bill outstanding was €€2,261. Seamus borrowed more than 1,100 euro from family and friends to pay off half the debt in a lump sum. He then offered to use 50 euro a week from his 196 euro social welfare to cover the rest of the bill.

Instead the ESB wanted €150 euro a week even though Seamus only receives €196 a week. Then they came out and warned him they would cut him off and added an extra €97 to his bill for the warning.

About 900 people a month are having their electricity cut off by ESB. Bord Gáis is disconnecting another 120 a month. Over a thousand people a month being cut off.

Its going to get worse the Public Service Obligation is going up by about 5%, even more for small businesses, shortly. Then in December will we see the squeeze from the other end - will the dole be cut, other living allowances reduced thereby reducing further the ability of people to pay. Tie in the likely sustained increase in food prices and its clear how serious the situation is going to be for households.

The ESB made half a billion in profits last year. Nobody is asking for free electricity. Whats needed is for the ESB to work with people to manage the repayment of debts rather than steamrolling over them in a bureaucratic way.

Fianna Fail and the Greens have failed to guarantee clean drinking water in Galway, adequate flood defences across the country, failed to provide salted roads in winter and now to top it off we have sections of communities being blacked out.

And somehow out of that mess they'd have you believe we can establish a cutting edge knowledge economy.

Check out the video on the at the new An Phoblacht YouTube channel

Glorious leader gains recognition despite an ungrateful people

2010-08-18T10:39:00.001+01:00

According to Newsweek magazine sth. Ireland is ruled by one of the World's great leaders. A man who has managed to win some serious respect in international circles.

Newsweek has, maybe for the craic, listed Brian Cowen as no. 5 in a list of 10 impressive world leaders.

Instead of calling him the Big Ignorant Fu$%er From Offaly he shall now be know as The Fiscal Taskmaster. Brian and his "able Finance Minister have pushed through austerity packages drastic enough to win the admiration of the international community, raised taxes, and slashed some public salaries by more than 10 percent. But the Irish aren't showing much gratitude".

Could that be because our economy is on life support, our young emigrating and our old people being treated like second class citizens all so we can bail out the bould Brian's developer and banker friends.

If Newsweek likes Brian Cowen for his slash and burn, bail out the boys who gave FF money, approach then they will love Brian Lenihan - a finance minister who comes from the "We had to destroy the village in order to save it" school of finance.

Voices on Unity - Different Perspectives

2010-08-17T22:57:00.001+01:00

Ogra are running a very interesting series of interviews and videos called Voices on Unity. It includes responses from varied political figures - Unionist and others to investigate their perspectives on national unity.

Some of the responses are exactly what you'd expect - a harumph and a kick up the backside to the fenian who asked it but others actually take the time to write a response, and rational ones at that.

Worth a look.

East Derry UUP MLA David McClarty takes the time to write a courteous response.

Cllr John Smyth of Antrim DUP would rather not have you as a neighbour.

Cllr. Andrew Lewis of the Lisburn DUP actually seems reasonable and approachable.

Ruairi McGinley Fine Gael Dublin councillor - The Obama of Ireland?

DUP's Adrian Watson is, shall we say, not receptive to even the friendliest approaches.

Samuel Cole of the DUP writes a friendly if some what out there rebuttal of the "Pope's green island" approach and touches briefly on the refusal of Vikings to speak Irish and how the Newry shopping run is the equivalent of economics migrants crossing the Rio Grande.

Finally there are some youtube interviews on Irish unity.

All in all some interesting material on show.

People may have to starve! 86 years on the same old track.

2010-08-12T19:08:00.000+01:00

'People may have to die in this country and may have to die through starvation.'
Cumann Na nGaedheal Minister for Industry and Commerce, Patrick McGilligan 1924

Tweedledum and Tweedledee

70 years ago.

A quote from an enjoyable post in the Dublin Opinion blog clearly showing how the southern state existed from an early day to protect the interests of a well heeled few who could peddle influence. How different, in mindset, is that McGilligan quote above to the words of Brian Lenihan snr. saying the underpopulated south could not support us all. How different to the deeds of Brian Lenihan jr. who has raised levies, taxes and cut services while bending backwards to protect the interests of failed developers and failed bankers.

The same bankers who are now relying on captial infusions taxed, levied and promised against ordinary Irish people. Which institutions are now the self same banks jacking up the interest rates on mortgage rates

A month or two ago Sinn Fein spokesperson on Workers Rights Martin Ferris in a speech on the Social Welfare bill pointed up the Government hypocrisy in how it treats people on social welfare and those who through property and financial speculation were largely responsible for the current economic mess.

Martin said:

“The current policy of attacking those on low wages and social welfare is not just a short sighted policy, it is an anti social one. It is also one that I suggest would not have gone down well with earlier Fianna Fáil cabinets who were attacked not for cutting social welfare payments and programmes but for increasing them. And they were attacked by the very same sort of people whose interests Fianna Fail now seems to have adopted as its priority.

“These were the people who in the 1930s were claiming that they couldn’t afford to take their money out of the London banks and stock exchange and invest it here because the tenement dwellers of Ireland would have no incentive to work for buttons if they were given outrageous luxuries like proper housing, schools, hospitals and so on.

“We are hearing the very same arguments now from people who are of the opinion that the only way to get the economy working again is to force people to work for a few hundred Euro a week and as part of that to reduce social welfare far below what it is now.

“In theory that may make sense but it overlooks a few important facts. Chief among them is that much of the growth during the Celtic Tiger was in highly skilled and well paid employment and of course a large proportion of that came from overseas investment in technology and other sectors. The economy did not grow on the basis of employing demoralised brow beaten poorly educated people on low wages, as IBEC and ISME and their cheerleaders in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael would have us believe.

“Indeed the greatest contribution of some of our own native entrepreneurs was to piggyback on the genuine growth in the economy by charging us exorbitant amounts for everything from mortgages to rents to pints of lager and paninis. And being careful at the same time to ensure that they paid as little tax or wages as possible. And these are the patriots whose bacon that the so-called republican party is proposing to save by imposing a massive drop in living standards on the decent people of this country, whose only crime was to work when there was work and suffer the indignity of unemployment when the work was gone.”

I think he hit the nail on the head. Cumann Na nGaedheal, Fianna Fail, Fine Fail, Fianna Gael. 86 years is enough of that lot.

Housing Campaigns

2010-08-10T13:32:00.002+01:00

The construction of housing was one sector where the Govt. caused much wastage and squandered so much investment. Dont mind those people who say we the people got carried away with ourselves. Its the responsibility of the Govt. to manage the economy or not to. They choose not to.

Now its time to clean up the mess and try to salvage what we can. As we noted previously there is significant housing over supply in most Irish counties. Whats going to be done with all this housing? Is it going to be left rot or can something be done to put that housing stock to work on behalf of society. After all through NAMA we'll end up paying for most of that housing again (didnt we already pay for it once through the state's over generous subvention of developers via tax breaks)

Cork Sinn Féin has launched a Cork Housing Campaign. Its a major new policy document titled 'Lets End The Wait' and was presented to the media by the party's five Councillors, Jonathan O'Brien, Fiona Kerins, Henry Cremin, Thomas Gould & Chris O'Leary, at Cork City Hall.

There are now more than 8,000 families on the housing waiting list in Cork. Thats an increase of more than 1,000 in just two months.

The campaign will focus on several core issues:

•A charter for social tenants
•Help for those facing negative equity
•Clearing the waiting list
•Reforming the housing list
•Providing genuinely affordable housing
•Improving housing maintenance
•A new deal for private tenants

There'll be a series of meetings across Cork to discuss the policy with local communites in Cork. The first public meeting takes place in Togher Community Centre on September 16th at 7.30pm.

NAMA is about managing the decline in value of properties. But a property with no one likely to live in it has no value. These houses represent sources of capital but if nobody lives in them they are worthless.

Its time to put all this otherwise wasted capital to productive use.

Shouting Stop - the return of emigration.

2010-08-07T17:05:00.003+01:00

Over 5,000 people a month are now choosing to emigrate from Ireland every month. Just like in the 80s communities are being drained of their lifeblood and their futures threatened by emigration. The death of rural Ireland was a consistent theme for years. We all thought this era had ended with the advent of the Celtic Tiger but we didnt figure on Fianna Fail and developers gambling with the future of Irish communities and losing.

An example of the destructive return of emigration is the village of Gneeveguilla in County Kerry. Gneeveguilla is well known for its Athletics club which epitomised the spirit of Irish communities - a communal spirit, a volunteer ethos, a sense of local pride.

Another expression of that local spirit is naturally the local GAA club. Gneeveguilla is a small village and emigration can quickly make its mark. The BBC noted that the local GAA club is being particulary hard hit by emigration (and isn't it typical that we must rely on foreign media to bring such a story to our attention rather than having RTE report on it. State broadcaster? yeah right!)

Emigration has made such an impact that the local GAA chairman is worried about the team’s collapse because so many players are likely to have eimgrated in the near future.

The collapse of the Irish construction industry hit rural Ireland especially hard. As economist Ronan Lyons demonstrated construction of new housing was particularly feverish in the west. Voters in Kerry and elsewhere would do well to remember that the reason their sons and daughters are emigrating is because the Govt. singularly failed to build a sustainable economy. All the way up the west coast in Donegal they will face the exact same problem. While the govt. dallies over the Donegal By Election the rate of unemployment for males under 25 in Donegal is estimated at up to 75% making Donegal a youth unemployment blackspot.

The Economic and Social Research Institute estimated that 120,000 will have emigrated in 2010 and 2011 combined, if the current rate continues.

Additional proof of the scale was evident last week when Eurostat revealed figures showing that the south of Ireland had the highest net outflow of population in the EU.

Once again the prospect of Irish communities withering away is a possible future.

We have been here before. John Healy famously shouted stop about the looming death of his homebirth place Charlestown. He firmly pointed the finger at the failed policies of the Govt. which did so little to save small town Ireland.

43 years later we need another John Healy as history repeats itself. Ogra Shinn Fein are currently running a campaign to highlight the current level of Emigration in Ireland

Visualising the Failures of the Govt's Construction policy

2010-08-05T17:54:00.003+01:00

Economist Ronan Lyons has put together a nice picture which shows how directionless the Irish construction industry was, how purposeless so much of the economic activity of the Celtic Tiger and clueless the Irish Govt. So clueless that some counties already have 12 years of housing supply already in place while others have under a year.

Western Irish Counties like Donegal and Kerry are particularly over supplied. As Martin Ferris noted in his report on the future of Farming and Fishing in Western Ireland the over reliance on construction encouraged by the Govt. at the cost of other types of investment would result in increased emigration as that industry collapsed. Unfortunately there was no alternative in place to prevent renewed rural emigration.

Ronan's picture is here. How many year's supply of housing is there already built in your south Ireland county?

Its the True spirit of Republicanism Roysh.

2010-08-03T12:08:00.005+01:00

Only a few days ago we were wondering why in God's name would the Irish Times be a recruiting Sgt. for Afghanistan. Some redemption for the self styled paper of record today. Fintan o'Toole is amazed at the strange spectacle of a former PD talking about the idea of a Republic. Bear in mind that while Fintan might not be all that bad he is apparently not the flavour of the month at the Irish Times who find his left wing leanings at odds with their own agenda.

Fintan writes:

I WAS very disappointed to read Ross O'Carroll-Kelly in The Irish Times on Saturday. It's not that Ross hasn't been in flying form of late. It's just that I was hoping to confirm that the author had pulled a fine satiric stunt and persuaded Madam to move the column to the front page on Friday.
The idea of Michael McDowell addressing a private audience at the Kildare Street and University Club about "true republicanism" just had to have been dreamt up by Ross's father and his sidekick Hennessy. It has all the hilarious absurdity of their myopic south Dublin self-regard.
But alas, no. There was Ross on his usual Saturday pedestal. Michael really was thrilling the private diners with flirtatious intimations of his own patriotic duty to save the Republic

And isn't it so typical of the PDs and their ilk that plans to save the country are worked out at private dinners with no doubt champagne, stories about who pulled a mulligan on the 18th hole and how the country was too small for all of us.

Fintan correctly identifies what will be one of the central themes of the next 5 years - the idea of the Republic. Already there has been a ongoing debate in the Times about a new Irish Republic. A discussion which Gerry Adams has been part of. The idea of the Republic is pervasive through out the south's political vocabulary with everyone claiming a piece of the action - even Fine Gaelers and the PDs. Imagine how bad it will get once Fianna Fail go into opposition.

But Fintan spots the one weakness in Republican McDowell's plans:

Michael wouldn't recognise a republic if he shared a cell in Thornton Hall with it for 10 years.

And isnt Thornton hall Prison the place to look for PD/FF Republicanism. At €200k an acre of farmland for a prison that wont be open until about 2014 but still costs 125k a year. €3o million for a site worked €6 million. Shop around as Mary Harney used tell us.

Usefully o'Toole then examines what the essence of a Republic should be and tries to examine recent events against its benchmark.

"A republic is an entity in which reasoned dissent and open debate about public policy are highly valued."

In contrast look at how McDowell censored reports, crushed the Center for Public Inquiry.

"A republic is a system in which public service is undertaken with a certain humility."

Look at the excesses of his former leader Mary Harney and her circle of buddies in Fas who showed all the humility of Marie Antoinette.

But the final nail in the coffin of this dissident Republicans can be seen 'In 2004 – rather deliciously while serving as minister for equality – he told the Irish Catholic that "a dynamic liberal economy like ours demands flexibility and inequality in some respects to function". It was such inequality "which provides incentives".'

So much for the Republic of McDowell. Are Fine Gael daft enough to bring him back? They might as well get Sean Fitz. back into Anglo.

9XYHYCXK7E6W