Right now there is a different ritual underway. The same civil servants from the Attorney General’s office who, according to Europe Minister Lucinda Creighton, were part of Ireland’s  negotiating team in Brussels on the Treaty, will be putting in their tuppence worth of advice to the Attorney General, to whom the Cabinet has now referred the question as to whether or not a referendum is required. The AG will be under ‘no pressure’ in coming to her decision, according to the Taosieach. It’s also a fact that the most the AG can do is advise the government of the day. It is ultimately their decision as to what happens, in light of any advice that is offered.

Then again, on the face of it, the Government has done as much as it can to ensure that the wording of the Treaty will not trigger a legal requirement for a referendum.

According to a scoop in the Irish Times, the Irish officials negotiating the final Treaty text were mandated to ensure that the Treaty wording would not necessitate a referendum in Ireland. The paper quoted an unnamed official. The Taoiseach told the Dail the following morning that he does not deal with comments in newspapers made by  unnamed officials, which is a bit rich considering the number of inspired leaks from within the government regularly attributed to ‘sources close to the government’,  or to some minister or other that the rest of the world is supposed to take seriously.

The Government does not want a referendum. Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore said as much at a meeting of the Dail Foreign Affairs Committee a couple of weeks ago. Transport Minister, Leo Varadkar, added fuel to the fire when he declared earlier this week that referendums are not necessarily the best way to make complex decisions (true); are not even especially democratic  within a system of representative politics ( arguable);  and that any referendum on this Treaty would be as much about  septic tanks and/or rivalries between the main opposition factions (definite) than the subject matter of the Treaty itself.  Both of these esteemed members of our Government were speaking well before any final text had been agreed in Brussels, never mind signed off by 25 of the 27 Eu Governments.

The Government has every right, too,  to be concerned that a referendum will not deliver a positive result. Last Sunday’s Red C opinion poll for the Sunday Business Post records 72%  in favour of a referendum but only a marginal majority in favour of a ‘yes’ vote. It’s a general rule of thumb that in any referendum on a contentious issue, a two thirds majority in favour is required at the outset of the campaign if there is to be any chance of the measure being carried. On the Red C figures, the referendum would not have a prayer.

The Treaty is contentious. Fianna Fail has come out in favour of a referendum as well as advocating a vigorous public information campaign by the Government on what the Treaty means for this country and what it will mean to our democracy, and control of our own economic destiny, over the long term.  It is taken as read that Sinn Fein will oppose ratification of this Treaty, whether the Government proceed through the parliamentary route of legislation or via a referendum of the people.  And, no doubt, there will be all sorts tripping over one another down in the Four Courts to launch constitutional actions to force a referendum should the Government stick with the legislative option.

But there is even more fun in store for us this time around. The Independents in the Dail are reported to be looking at using Article 27 of the Constitution to force a referendum on any Government sponsored legislation to ratify this Treaty. To do that, they will need  one third of Dail  members. As it stands, the opposition has 52 deputies against the Coalition’s 109, leaving aside the one Fine Gael TD, Denis Naughten, and two Labour, Tommy Broughan and Patrick Nulty, who have lost the parliamentary party whip.  There’s no guarantee that Broughan, Nulty or Neachtain  would line up with the rest of the Opposition to make up the numbers for an Article 27 plea. Even at that, one or more further defections from the government ranks would be required.

But let’s assume for the sake of argument that the one third barrier is crossed. The initiative then passes to the Seanad where a majority of all Senators must agree or it’s a lost cause.  Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein have 17 Senators between them. There are 13 ‘Independents’, not all of whom could be relied upon to vote against the Government. But theoretically, with 30 votes, only one defection would be needed from the Govenment ranks  to deliver the required Senate majority.

More fun lies in store when the matter gets to Aras an Uachtarain, as the whole thing stops dead in its tracks unless President Michael D. Higgins accepts the motion of the Dail and Seanad.  Even after all that, this would not be an ‘ordinary’ referendum as we know and love them. A further constitutional provision kicks in, a subsection of Article 47, requiring that one third of all the electorate must vote ‘No’ for the Government’s proposed legislation to be defeated.  On a high overall turnout of about 70%, this suggests a 60% ‘No’ vote would be the least required to meet that threshold.

And hold on; it’s not even finished at that stage.  The Government could then dissolve the Dail and call a general election. Assuming the same parties won that election, they could settle the matter finally with a majority Dail vote.

Hardly surprising, then, that Article 27 has never been utilised since the 1937 Constitution came into effect. 

From the Government’s perspective, the easiest thing would be to bow to the inevitable and concede to a referendum long before any such process gathers political momentum. For Senators, there’s the chance  to demonstrate that the Seanad retains relevance within our democracy and should not be abolished as Enda Kenny has pledged.  Our new President, Michael D Higgins, would be faced with a lonely decision, though based on his track record of personal and political integrity and his commitment to act in the best interests of the people, it should not be a difficult decision for him.

The real losers here may be the Government, whatever way they turn.  They might do better to go for a referendum option and fight their corner than politically brazening it out and hiding behind the Attorney General’s legal advice.  The issue is not whether a referendum is legally required to ratify this instrument;  a referendum on the Treaty is now a political demand. Tough it out against all challenges, including the Article 27 process, and they just  might get away with it, given the strength of their parliamentary majority, the lack of any half-way attractive alternative government on offer and the propensity of the electorate to forget what happened last week never mind  within a timeframe of three years ago which is the old territory of the distant past where this Treaty would belong by the time the next general election comes into view.  Or so they may reckon.

Except that this Treaty is not about some fluffy broken election promises. It goes to the heart of Ireland democratic future. People need to be informed about what it means and what are its implications for the future. The public want to debate what’s in the best interests, of what may be the least bad option in respect of the decisions that have to be made and which we, as citizens, want to have a say. It’s a simple equation in political terms: no referendum = loss of credibility. Probably fatal too, over the long haul.

The Government enjoys a rock solid parliamentary majority, which looks likely to hold through thick and thin.  And the best prognosis for 2012 is that whilst things may not get any worse, they’re unlikely to get any better. So in good news terms ,‘thin’ is most likely to be the political diet .

 In the past week too, though, there have been some fairly ominous signals that all is not well at Executive level, which must be a cause for concern to both the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny and, perhaps more particularly, the Labour leader and Tanaiste,  Eamon Gilmore since it is within the Labour Cabinet ranks that the main wobbles have begun to appear.

Hence, there was the spectacle of one Labour Cabinet Minister, Pat Rabbitte, leading a backbench delegation to the office of another Labour Cabinet Minister, Ruairi Quinn, to tell him that he had to reverse planned Budget cuts affecting the DEIS schools.  Last time anyone looked, Rabbitte and Quinn, both long term parliamentarians with a fair bit of Cabinet experience between the two of them, are serving in the same Cabinet? The Education Minister’s raft of cutbacks were presumably approved by the whole Cabinet? They were not a solo-run on the Minister’s part. 

So just  how appropriate is it that a fellow Cabinet Minister leads a delegation of protesting backbenchers to his office to tell him how to do his job properly? Was Minsiter Rabbittee away the day the Education cuts were discussed? Did he fail to ask the right questions? Or is there something else going on here?

Even more bizarre, the articles in today’s Sunday Independent, based on a long and fire-cosy interview of Joan Burton by Daniel McConnell. Among other fairly hair-raising comments, the Minister for Social Protection, Joan Burton,  also divisively and unnecessarily dissed on her Cabinet and constituency colleague, Leo Varadkar, which is always politically risky. Next she broke with government policy on the need for a second bailout for Ireland ( that everyone knows will likely happen anyway either through a new package or an extension of the existing one) in a way that old Sir Humphrey of ‘ Yes, Minister’ fame could only have described as ‘unfortunate’.

The vast majority of the population of the state want this government to succeed. If opinion polls are anything to go by, citizens are prepared to stick with the government irrespective of any mistakes and misjudgements individual members of the Cabinet may make, thus far anyway. The ranks of  backbench government TDs similarly. The reason is simple: there is no alternative. The weakness of this government, though, is being exposed at the top. 

Ministers whose personal vanity can’t take being challenged on mistakes that they make – like Burton’s disability cuts or Quinn’s cuts to DEIS schools, or the rest of misjudgements that might be counted against the lot of them even at this stage – and who cannot respect the normal protocols of Cabinet will, sooner or later, put the whole enterprise at risk.  Like it or not, the place for a Government Minister to influence the direction of government policy is within the Cabinet not through the columns of the Sunday Independent.

In August 2007, then Minister for Finance Brian Cowen gave an address to the Humbert Summer School.  It’s worth reading it all (scroll down to comments) to see the hubris that characterised this vintage of Fianna Fail – at a time when the banking system was already fatally compromised.

Note this part:

They [the public] did so in spite of the unprecedented pressure which he [Bertie] had come through in the first weeks of the campaign. The public showed that they have an innate sense of fair play and perspective which is willing to hear all of the information before reaching a conclusion. It remains a fact that confidential material was selectively leaked by a person or persons unknown with the sole intent of causing Bertie Ahern significant electoral damage. Only material which might cause damage was leaked, while other material was withheld.

No person should have to go through what Bertie Ahern endured in those weeks and we can learn a lot from the public’s balanced and reflective response. After ten years, the public were not going to be rushed into making a judgement on the Taoiseach. They know him pretty well by now and they understand that he is not motivated by personal gain. They have seen the progress made under his leadership. He has never been a specialist in the soundbite approach to politics, but he has more than made up for this in the substance of his achievements.

Thus Cowen presents not just a judgement on the Mahon leaks around this time — with sources that only the Irish Times could reveal — but also a claim that he and the electorate at large had come to the conclusion that there were no flawed pedigree issues with Bertie. Indeed, Cowen’s reputation was enhanced at the time by the perception that he had taken the FF election campaign by the scruff of the neck from a Mahon-distracted Bertie and led the party to a historic victory. Which part of that legacy will Micheál Martin be disowning?

In the early months of 2011 it sometimes felt like 1989 all over again, the year when people power across Central and Eastern Europe brought about the final collapse of communism.  This year it was the turn of people who had endured decades of oppression and dictatorship in the Middle East and North Africa to take to the streets to reassert control over their own lives and demand regime change.

But as people in one area of the world placed their hopes in the establishment of democratic values, the flaws of democracy were being dramatically exposed in places where it is held to be most firmly entrenched.  In the US, the failure of a Democratic President and a Republican Congress to broker an agreement on a new debt ceiling almost brought the most powerful nation on the planet to the brink of sovereign default. In Europe, two democratically elected governments were effectively deposed and replaced by technocrats more suited to a Franco-German alliance that has shifted the delicate balance of the EU’s institutional democracy in favour of the preservation of their own interests.

In our own little neck of the woods, 2011 began as a year of great hopes. The February election all but buried the power and political hegemony of Fianna Fail; if not for good, then at least for a political generation.  After three years of austerity, it looked like Ireland was at last about to turn that fabled corner and claw its way back to growth, begin to tackle the twin blights of unemployment and emigration and for some of us deluded souls, grasp the opportunity to introduce meaningful political reform  that would finally break the hold of vested interests on politics, policy- making and self-aggrandisment to the detriment of the rest of society.

Memorable events like the Queen’s visit and US President Obama’s one day trip to Ireland fanned the flames of those hopes temporarily, but as the year draws to a close the bright flames are flickering and hopes are turning to ashes. Unemployment has worsened, now in reach of 15%; economic growth projections have been reduced to less than 1%; the new government, heavily mandated and enjoying the most comfortable majority of any government in the history of the state, has failed to live up to its early promise. There has been a slew of public appointments that reek of patronage, very little in the way of that badly needed reform of political or parliamentary processes and the pavements of the streets of every town in the country are littered with broken political promises that were thrown about with all the abandon of confetti at a wedding during the February election campaign.  

At EU level, the most notable, indeed the only real achievement, has been in negotiation of fisheries policy by the Minister for Agriculture, Simon Coveney.  There has been no progress on the more pertinent issue of taking the yoke of bank debt off the backs of the Irish taxpayer, in which the most solemn commitments were made to the people by the parties of government prior to and during the general election.  Instead, what we have witnessed is a consistent redrawing of the lines by key government Ministers of what’s possible or not possible in an EU context on renegotiation of Ireland IMF/EU loans package, promissory notes to Anglo and the like.  

It’s not so much that this government is continuing with the policies of the previous administration, as it is frequently accused; it’s that the Cabinet, collectively or individually, appear to have no constructive or progressive ideas of their own. Indeed, those most thunderous in their denunciation of policy when they sat on the opposition benches, those mighty mice of opposition, are being exposed as mini-mouse ministers, whose greatest talent appears to be to cover up their ineptitude  and poor judgement by resort to  the exercise of media spin, either overtly, by proxy or through that sinister backdoor device of the increasingly ubiquitous ‘senior government source’. The first real test for this government came with the Budget. Sadly it is a test which they failed at just about every level except the one of ensuring that the concerns of key party- political constituencies were assuaged, for a while at least. The real test will come if a mini-Budget is required by mid year, as many expect, to meet the Troika targets.

According to most of the pundits, the best we can look forward to on the economic front in 2012 is that even if things don’t get any better, then they may not get much worse.  But then, there is always hope on this, as on every other front, that maybe the government will discover hidden virtues of courage and cohesion and begin to deliver on the hopes that were originally, and remain,  invested in it. What we can’t have is another year of dashed expectations.

Happy New Year to one and all!

A country is not a company and government is not a learning institution in which the top class are required to write assignments on a flawed module (the PfG)  for assessment by the head teacher who will then present them with ‘action points’ on how to do better in future.  Nobody appears to have told Enda Kenny that though.

According to this morning’s Irish Times:

“Taoiseach Enda Kenny said yesterday that he will meet Ministers individually in January to itemise their responsibilities in terms of “actionable points” in the programme, and will be demanding a progress report from each of them at the end of the Government’s first year in office.

In an interview with political correspondents, the Taoiseach said that he had established an office in his own department to translate the programme into “actionable points” so that the performance of Ministers can be assessed.

“One of the things I notice, in the general run of the mill that happens about Cabinet meetings, is that a lot of the material that comes through for Government decision is not actually central to the programme for government itself. These are things that happen on a daily and weekly basis.

“So what I’ve done in that regard is to actually set up an office here in my own department, at no extra cost because it is redeployment of personnel, to look at the programme for government, and to have it translated into actionable points in respect of each Minister.”

Mr Kenny said that the process will enable him to discuss with each Minister the rate of progress that is being made on every one of the points that comes under their responsibility in the programme.”

Mr Kenny’s government is developing more layers than an onion. There is the economic management layer in which he as Taoiseach, the Finance Ministers Michael Noonan and Brendan Howlin, the Tanaiste, Eamon Gilmore and their respective crews of advisors decide on matters of economic policy. Now, within the Department of the Taoiseach itself, a politburo of faceless unnaccountable  apparatchiks – presumably no civil servants are engaged in this work as Mr. Kenny stressed it is a ‘non cost’ initiative – appears to have been established. It is this fine body who, under the Taoiseach’s direction, will devise the criteria to which individual Ministers are  held to account in the performance of their briefs. As to who will assess the Taoiseach’s own performance and hand out ‘action points’ to him doesn’t arise. Further, it presumes that the PfG is written on tablets of stone, like the Ten Commandments.

Irrespective of its inherent flaws, misjudgements, and primary role as a political propaganda piece, the PfG was redundant before the ink was even dry on its fine print.  The debt crisis in Europe that existed when the PfG was negotiated has since deepened into a profound political crisis. The unemployment crisis in Ireland itself, which the lofty rhetoric of election promises transferred into the PfG was intended to impact and resolve, has gotten worse. The assumption that the political promise list of two parties about to enter government together  remains sacrosanct above the reality of this unfolding crisis is not just inflexible, it is simply boneheaded.

This ‘continuous assessment’ of how the political aspirations of the PfG are being met by individual ministers  is yet  another bad idea. It bears all the hallmarks of the sort of rushes of blood to the head that, for instance, impelled Enda Kenny to take the wrecking ball to FG’s agenda for political reform before the last election by announcing the abolition of the Seanad without consulting anyone in his party. Now it appears this latest wheeze is designed  to convince the ranks of  political correspondents that he really is the ‘commander in chief’ who knows what he is doing and is genuinely in charge of his generals.  If that’s what is going on it reflects very poorly on the current Taoiseach.

In our system, Ministers bring their proposals to Cabinet and policy is thus collectively approved. That policy is then open to public scrutiny and its success or failure can be adjudicated upon. Individual Ministers make mistakes and errors of judgement but may manage to convince a majority of their Cabinet colleagues that their policy choice is the best option. It is up to parliament, their own backbenchers and the opposition, in the first instance to expose the flaws in their preferred policy choices and thereafter, the media and the public to scrutinise and critique the likely outcome. In this way, Ministers are held accountable to their own party, parliament and the public for their actions and for their mistakes. There is no process outlined in our constitution for a parallel political process assessing and directing individual Ministerial performances that is not amenable to any public scrutiny in any respect. Further, what sanctions would be imposed on recalcitrant Ministers are unclear.

According to the Times:

‘Mr Kenny declined to say what action might be taken against Ministers who failed to deliver on their commitments, saying his objective was to focus his Cabinet team on delivering the stated commitments of the Government.

“If there’s a reason why there can’t be work going on about these things, I want to know it. And if there’s an issue that can’t be dealt with, I want to know the reasons behind that,” said Mr Kenny.

“Obviously, Ministers cannot account for constitutional blockages as in the case of upward-only rent. But we’ll have some straight talking here about getting on with this business,” he added.

The Taoiseach said he would listen to the case Ministers would make on how they were measuring up to their responsibilities.’

Sounds more like a political vanity project of Mr’ Kenny’s own devising and a a fairly dodgy one at that, from a democratic perspective.

Clearly, the prospect of an isolated Britain,or one that breaks away from Europe entirely is exercising minds on the continent.
“Great Britain is now largely isolated. As a result, it needs to ask itself what role, if any, it still plays in this new Europe,” Der Spiegel states.
The German newspaper’s analysis locates the EU political crisis that erupted this weekend within a larger context of global politics and long term positioning of various power blocs within the EU:
“Merkel, for her part, wants to prevent Britain and the euro zone from drifting further and further apart,” according to Der Spiegel.

“She recently told confidants that it is important to give the British the feeling that they are still part of Europe. But the French see it differently, hoping that they will carry more weight in a union that does not include Britain.
“Despite all their differences, Germany has always seen the EU as a political partner of the United States. The French, however, want to establish Europe as an independent power bloc in competition with the Americans. One reason this has not happened so far is that the British have fought to maintain the EU’s close trans-Atlantic ties. This dispute will now flare up once again.”

The reality is that Cameron may have walked away from a bad deal for the wrong reasons, but that doesn’t make what has been proposed any less a bad deal for the rest of the EU in the long run. In essence, the proposed new inter-governmental treaty heralds the dawn of a new kind of Europe. An EU in which the traditional balance of powers – the Community Method – between the various EU Institutions has been pushed to one side and replaced. The role of the Commission as the sole proposer of laws and its significance as the defender of the rights of small states within Europe no longer applies within this new order. The European Parliament is once again relegated to the status of a talking shop. A Franco-German axis calls the shots and no leader of any other member state dare stand up to them – no small debt beleaguered state in any case – for fear of finding themselves diplomatically isolated , as in Britain’s case, or at risk of finding their regime replaced by some more acceptable technocratic alternative, as in Greece and Italy.
Moreover, most economic critics suggest that the summit deal does not go anywhere near addressing the real problems of the eurozone and  the wider European debt crisis and can only make the problem worse in the short term, rather than contributing to its resolution.

As summed up by the Oxford-based economist, Kevin O’Rourke:
“…what is needed to save the eurozone in the immediate future is a European Central Bank that acts like a proper monetary authority. True, Germany is insisting on a “fiscal stability union” as a condition of allowing the ECB to do even the minimum needed to keep the euro afloat; but this is a political argument, not an economic one. Economically, the proposal would make an already terrible institutional design worse.
“What is needed to save the eurozone in the medium term is a central bank mandated to target more than just inflation – for example, unemployment, financial stability, and the survival of the single currency. A common framework for regulating the financial system is also required, as is a common banking-resolution framework that serves the interests of taxpayers and government bondholders, rather than those of banks and their creditors. This will require a minimal fiscal union; a full-scale fiscal union would be better still. Yet none of this was on the summit’s agenda.”
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/orourke1/English

The reaction of the markets this week would seem to bear out this analysis. Further, the prospect of France shortly losing its Triple A debt status is being widely reported [ See FT : ‘Sarkozy plays down value of Triple A status’ 13.12]. So the crisis rumbles on until either Italy or Spain, or perhaps both, hit a debt wall early in 2012.
No-one can predict where global, never mind European, politics will be in five months time, never mind a year or even five years. Nor how the position of the UK in Europe will evolve in that time period, which has critical implications for Ireland. We understand the British, and they understand us, even if our neighbourliness is marred by the occasional spat over our shared historical legacy. Some 40% of our export trade is with the UK. Our political and judicial institutions have similar characteristics even if they have culturally diverged over time. Like Britain, too, Ireland prides itself on its own form of ‘special relationship’ with the United States. Throughout this current crisis, the British government has been supportive of the Irish government’s efforts to put its fiscal house in order. Traditionally at EU level, more often than not, Ireland’s trade interests have coincided with Britain’s and Irish policy has responded accordingly.

To date, the domestic political debate on the outcome of the summit has concentrated on whether or not this new inter-governmental Treaty will require ratification by referendum in due course. That debate is largely academic. There’s no certainty about what will emerge in the fine print and detail of the proposal. Indeed, there’s no great certainty that anything may emerge at all. Assuming something does, the smart money is on a referendum being a legal requirement because of the nature of the proposed arrangements and their implications for a further transfer of sovereignty to a new body that is outside the scope of the existing EU Treaties. At the very least, there will be High Court action to force the government to concede a referendum.

Once all this is clarified, it is likely that the debate on whether or not a referendum will pass or fail, and what that will mean for the present government’s fortunes, will become the all-consuming subject of media attention.

That would be a pity. A broader and more politically sober debate about where European democracy is heading, and what carriage on that train we should occupy as a country, is also called for.

Insofar as the budget goes, this is actually fair enough: you cast your vote, your representatives emerge and your government is formed to govern until the next election. In between, to try to govern by some imagined public consensus, to steer a course by the uncertain stars of opinion poll and Twitter trend, is a receipe for populism and executive paralysis. Our TDs, for well-canvassed psephological reasons, have always inclined to the view that opinions are for voters to express - via Joe Duffy, the Irish Daily Mail and misspelled constituents’ letters - and for parliamentarians to run with. But the baying of the mob is not a sound basis for good governance.

Irish public figures could have benefitted over the years from listening more closely to one of their illustrious forebears, Edmund Burke, whose Speech to the Electors of Bristol remains the classic statement of the MP’s right and duty to be guided by his own, informed opinion, even if this conflicts with the express wishes of his electorate. A little more aloof paternalism might have brought a crop of TDs more willing to challenge the doomed consensus that helped inflate the bubble.

But this can only go so far, and the Irish Times (naturally) would take judicious flouting of the popular will beyond the Pale. Stephen Collins, discussing the ramifications of a eurozone exit, makes the following extraordinary statement:

“Over the next few months, if all goes well, there will be agreement at EU level to a series of binding budgetary disciplines. This will probably require treaty change and, even though that may result in a bitter referendum, it is very much in Ireland’s interest that it happens. In the long run, such a development will ensure the Irish people will be saved from a repeat of the economic indiscipline and political incompetence that characterised the Bertie Ahern years.”

Now, the government led by Bertie Ahern may well have been indisiplined and incompetent. But the implication of this passage is that submitting our financial affairs to the scrutiny and (possible) veto of the EU is the best – perhaps only - way to avoid a repeat meltdown ”in the long run”. The future financial policy of any Irish government is presented as a ticking timebomb.

This presupposes a complete inability of Irish people to run their own country properly. In effect, Collins would have us transfer significant new powers – amounting perhaps to a complete and permanent surrender of economic sovereignty – to the EU, not because this serves the greater good, but because, left to ourselves, we’ll only bugger it up.

It’s a sinister implication, anti-democratic and cynical. A country cannot realistically be governed by popular will alone, but nor can it be legitimately governed by giving up on representative democracy and handing the hard decisions over to centralised European control. 

Even if we shrug aside these fundamental objections, it’s hard to say whether or not we would be better off in or out of a new, financially integrated eurozone. Certainly, as Collins notes, attempting to pay off our load of euro-demoninated debt in some devalued punt nua would be extremely costly, and therefore exiting the euro would have to happen simultaneously with another radical move: default on sovereign debt, à la Argentina in 2002.

As I noted at the outset, these arguments are complex, and if such are the stark choices that are going to emerge out of this week’s discussions, politics isn’t going to get any simpler for a while yet. I would simply hope that our decisions flow freely, not from fear of our own inherent incompetence.

Where substance was warranted , we got spin. Lots of it; particularly about jobs and this government’s record on job creation. Indeed the Taoiseach seemed a bit at cross purposes over the government’s exact role on the jobs front. At the top of the speech, he talked about creating the environment for job creation. By the middle, he was boasting that last summer’s damp squib ‘jobs initiative’ had created “ over 20,000 new jobs and training places.”

No evidence was forthcoming to support this startling claim – particularly so given the persistent rise in the numbers joining the Live Register since this marvellous initiative was announced. Nor was any reference made to the cost of those so-called jobs – at 500m euro per annum, largely drawn from a raid on the private pensions of ordinary citizens, then plunged into the provision of cheap labour for employers internships under the Jobsbridge scheme, more commonly derided these days as the jobsbridge to nowhere, and some seasonal employment in tourism arising from the VAT change.

“By 2015 I want to see our deficit under control and real growth in jobs,” the Taoiseach stated.

Well, he’ll get no argument on that one. It’s what we all want. But it’s a trifle disingenuous to go on to claim that ‘jobs’ are at the centre of a deflationary budget, which of its nature will cost jobs, not create any. In fact, most of the large labour intensive capital projects that might give rise to immediate job creation opportunities have been either postponed or cancelled in this Budget.

Job stimulus measures in the Budget, the Taoiseach claimed, will include ‘targeted measures” such as the already announced – three times at the last count – micro- finance scheme for business which, with a bit of luck and parliamentary schedules notwithstanding, should be up and running by mid 2012. Loan guarantees were also mentioned, giving rise to a queasy feeling; a vague recollection of a loans guarantee scheme for SMEs in the 1980s, which proved a disaster for many of those who participated in it. The trouble was that the government might guarantee your loan for a specified period, but the credit institutions still insisted on personal collateral guarantees like your house. In the event that the business venture failed a couple of years further down the line….Surely, they can’t be resurrecting a version of that one? Hopefully, not.

Sharing the pain was another theme. Apparently, we’re all to be impressed by the fact that free mobile phones are now to be taken off previous members of government. I was shocked. I didn’t realise that former Taoisigh or Ministers were in receipt of such largesse in the first place!

“Difficult choices are never easy” probably rates as the worst line in the whole speech. The converse is also true: easy choices are never difficult, especially when it comes to cuts in public expenditure and social welfare, and one is in such an exalted position in life that one will never be affected by them. But no doubt those on the otehr side of that fence will learn all about that in the days ahead.

Then there were the vague references to the crisis in Europe and what’s likely to transpire at the umpteenth of the umpteenth summits to bring an end to it once and for all later in the week. What the Taoiseach had to say was vague; so vague that what he meant is difficult to discern. Ireland supports stronger economic governance in the EU, he said; and Irish people are ‘paying the price’ for its absence. Thing is, Ireland never once breached the conditions of the Stability and Growth Pact, so far as I know. That was France…and Germany, eh? So whose price are we paying, exactly? And what are the implications of this future stronger economic governance, as Enda Kenny perceives it?

As for Ireland’s contribution to whatever neat solution is devised by Merkel and Sarkozy and presented to the rest of the EU Council for rubberstamping this week, the Taoiseach has promised:
“ I will work to achieve a positive outcome for Ireland.”

Now, that’s reassuring.

Finally, the Taoiseach is committed to restoring our economic sovereignty and releasing Ireland from the shackles of the Troika by 2015. Perfectly laudable, and spiced up with a reference to the 90 year old 1921 Treaty which brought Ireland the ‘home rule’ that had been the dominant meme of nationalist politics for several generations previous. But the question must be raised, is today’s generation of politicians seeking ‘independence from’ as their forbears once did, a focus that created a state that constantly teetered on the brink of failure for the next three generations; or is it ‘independence for’ something that they’re after? We’ll all support you on that one, Enda, if that’s what you’re truly promising.

I have no idea how any of this banking stuff works or what, if any, implications this action has on the Irish front. But it seems that stock markets in London, New York and the major European capitals soared on this breaking news.

It would be nice to believe it’s all going to mean something positive, especially in the wake of the ESRI’s gloomy predictions for our economy next year and today’s worsening Live Register figures signalling the obvious failure of last summer’s so-called ‘Jobs Initiative’ and further slow downs in the real economy. Now, it’s back to the EU politicians and what decisions they’re going to make to further head off the collapse of the euro and the catastrophe that would unleash….far worse than anything that’s planned in next week’s Budget.

The full text of the ECB release is below the fold. 

PRESS RELEASE
30 November 2011 – Coordinated central bank action 
to address pressures in global money markets
The Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve and the Swiss National Bank are today announcing coordinated actions to enhance their capacity to provide liquidity support to the global financial system. The purpose of these actions is to ease strains in financial markets and thereby mitigate the effects of such strains on the supply of credit to households and businesses and so help foster economic activity.
These central banks have agreed to lower the pricing on the existing temporary US dollar liquidity swap arrangements by 50 basis points so that the new rate will be the US dollar Overnight Index Swap (OIS) rate plus 50 basis points. This pricing will be applied to all operations conducted from 5 December 2011. The authorisation of these swap arrangements has been extended to 1 February 2013. In addition, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, and the Swiss National Bank will continue to offer three-month tenders until further notice.
As a contingency measure, these central banks have also agreed to establish temporary bilateral liquidity swap arrangements so that liquidity can be provided in each jurisdiction in any of their currencies should market conditions so warrant. At present, there is no need to offer liquidity in non-domestic currencies other than the US dollar, but the central banks judge it prudent to make the necessary arrangements so that liquidity support operations could be put into place quickly should the need arise. These swap lines are authorised through 1 February 2013.
European Central Bank Decision
The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) decided in co-operation with other central banks the establishment of a temporary network of reciprocal swap lines. This action will enable the Eurosystem to provide euro to those central banks when required, as well as enabling the Eurosystem to provide liquidity operations, should they be needed, in Japanese yen, sterling, Swiss francs and Canadian dollars (in addition to the existing operations in US dollars).
The ECB will regularly conduct US dollar liquidity-providing operations with a maturity of approximately one week and three months at the new pricing. The schedule for these operations, which will take the form of repurchase operations against eligible collateral and will be carried out as fixed-rate tender procedures with full allotment, will be published today on the ECB’s website.
In addition, the initial margin for three-month US dollar operations will be reduced from currently 20% to 12% and weekly updates of the EUR/USD exchange rate will be introduced in order to carry out margin calls. Those changes will be effective as of the operations to be conducted on 7 December 2011. Further details about the operations will be made available in the respective modified tender procedure via the ECB’s Website.
Information on the actions to be taken by other central banks is available on the following websites:
Bank of Canada (http://www.bankofcanada.ca)
Bank of England (http://www.bankofengland.co.uk)
Bank of Japan (http://www.boj.or.jp/en)
Federal Reserve (http://www.federalreserve.gov)
Swiss National Bank (http://www.snb.ch)