FG TD's Wife Goes Indy?

Anne Breen, the wife of Clare TD Pat Breen, is reportedly running in the local elections as an independent. Check out the front page of the Clare Champion (hint: it's in the middle of the puff piece headlined 'hospital campaigner joins election race). 

Strange stuff: a domestic squabble, a selection convention dispute, or something slightly stranger? You'll know when I do.

Update: it seems a simple case of over-represenation: the would-be Cllr. Anne Breen seemingly found little room on a ticket with sitting cllr. Oliver Garry and former party big beast Madeleine Taylor-Quinn. Embarking on a political solo run, however, may not be the best thing for Pat Breen - unless, of course she wins. In that case, all will be forgiven.

Update 2: A poster on politics.ie claims that Anne and Pat Breen are in fact estranged - which makes the situation even more delicate...

RTE.ie Joins the Cheerleaders?

Anyone check out the homepage of news on the economy from RTE today? Aside from the fact that there's not much news since Thursday, they've made Apache Pizza's expansion plans their top story. I can see why they'd want to report something positive, but some stories just aren't top-of-the-page news. A pizza chain creating 100 jobs is one of them. Other stories bear a remarkable similarity to the press releases over at the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment.

Another item, which shows how consumer sentiment is continuing to tank, is headlined 'survey shows consumers still cautious' - as if that's a strange thing! Has RTE.ie suspended its critical judgement to become a cheerleader?

No Neat Trick

The Indo today has the unsurprising news that plenty of developers are simply not paying up on development levies and other charges to local authorities. Add to that people who can't afford to pay waste charges, plus businesses struggling to pay water charges and you have a €271m black hole. One builder in Monaghan owes the local authority€813,000 in unpaid development levies.

Development levies were one of the neatest tricks during the boomtime: rather than setting aside a fifth of a development as social and affordable housing (nominally a legal requirement) a builder could instead make a cash payment to the local authority. Hey presto - the developer can market their complex to snobs who don't like 'social and affordable' types and keep the price up, the local authority gets a fat wad of cash to spend on anything infrastructure-related, and the people who need social and affordable housing may get a hand. By 2006, it emerged that the one-off development levies accounted for 13.6 per cent of local authority budgets. 

In other words, local authorities across the country were spending money that just isn't there anymore. Now, it's revealed, not all of the money was actually stumped up. The Indo reports that debt collection agencies have been engaged to chase up the builders but, chances are, a good chunk of those fellahs are not insolvent. This mess is the next public sector finance time bomb.

Open Season on Biffo

The Irish Times has gone all web2.0 and allowed site visitors to comment on Brian Cowen's hectoring op-ed in this morning's edition. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fire back your bile against the man who led us into this mess.

I suspect it won't be pretty.....

A Bad Bank is a Bad Idea

I've shied away from bitching about the budget - at least here. That was before Brian Lenihan's appearance on Prime Time last night to discuss the 'bad bank' proposal. Never mind the fact that the Government have committed to buying assets without making any effort to ascertain their value - their 'bad bank' plan as proposed is doomed to failure if history and common sense are any guides.

Charles Wallace and Swedish Economist Stefan Karlsson go in-depth elsewhere,but the reasons are simple. In the two recent examples of successful 'bad bank' proposals - the American response to the 1989 Savings-and-Loan scandal and the (oft-cited) Swedish response to the 1990s banking crisis - the institutions being rescued were nationalised. Government officials objectively set the value of bad assets that the banks couldn't offload, and the state purchased them. When the banks had traded for a bit and found their feet, off they went again into the Private Sector, and normality was restored. 

In Japan, they took a different approach between 1999 and 2005, with the Resolution and Collection Group: the barely-solvent or insolvent banks continued as independent entities, and tried to negotiate the sale price of the  with the RCC. Predictably, they thought their assets - many of them ludicrously overvalued Zombie companies - were worth more than the State was prepared to pay. The result? The RCC only purchased 858 loans, with a nominal value of $38 billion, and Japan's economic stagnation continued right up to the present crisis.

The Government's plan (and, whisper it, Obama's) is doomed to failure for the very reasons that hobbled the Japanese approach. With bankers trying to extract maximum value for their worthless assets and Government officials trying not to get shafted, the result will be a "stalemate" - that's the analysis of William Seidman, who headed up the American response and advised the Japanese on theirs. 

Moral outrage over the proposal is a blind alley - there are no good choices in the current crisis. However, if we're going to bail out bankers, the bailout strategy should at least work. This plan, quite simply, won't.

UPDATE: Lenihan on RTE Radio has said that the Government may 'part nationalise' banks if the bad debts are big enough. Are they making it up as they go along?

How Did He Do It?

An interesting piece in the Indo today reveals that Michael Martin's brother, Cllr Sean Martin, sent out a few press releases on local issues from a Department of Foreign Affairs email address. Cllr Martin has no connection to the Department, but somehow had access to its email system.

Opposition politicians have kicked up demanding a full investigation, and rightly so. If the Minister for Foreign Affairs is in the business of letting relatives and friends use his Department's email system, then the security of this (highly sensitive) area of the Government is compromised. It's not the breathtaking arrogance of this that ticks me off - it's the fact that they've played fast and loose with the integrity of our foreign policy.

Set George Free!

I've just stumbled across a very interesting interview with George Lee on RTE. Here's the clip:

From my reading of it, he appears to be either insinuating pressure not to criticise the government, or that he can't really tell the full story about what's happened (ie: FF F**ked up) while still remaining politically neutral.

The former would be sinister - though not surprising given the Cowen picture debacle - and the latter makes a joke of public service broadcasting's primary goal: telling the truth about what's happening. Lee is an economist of the highest integrity and ability, and should be able to give his professional opinion on the current financial crisis. If he objectively decides that the government messed up, but the opposition's plans to resolve the crisis are errant nonsense, that's his analysis - not him banging a particular political drum.

RTE bosses should do the right thing - set George Lee free on our airwaves to tell us just what happened to get the country in this state, and what will happen now.

Change the Rules: We Don't Like 'Em Anymore...

There's one area, it seems, that McDonalds, Burger King, Supermacs and Subway can cooperate on: shafting its workers. This is the first we've heard of the 'Quick Service Food Alliance', but they're making a splash by challenging a pay system that has been in place since the mid-1970s. 

Essentially, they're making a constitutional challenge to the right of the Joint Labour Committee(JLC) to set wages for the sector. They have a specific problem with paying people double time on Sundays and, presumably, want to use the courts rather than the Labour relations structures already in place. Neither the Irish Times nor the Indo speculate on why that is: perhaps it's because the typical fast food worker has less chance of hiring a hotshot lawyer than, say, McDonalds. Just as employers across Ireland simply ignored the National Wage Agreement when it stopped suiting them (rather than seeking to renegotiate), this body are trying to abandon the Corporatist structure they clung to for years - one that guaranteed them little or no industrial actionand reliable profits. 

Interestingly, the Alliance have a 'contact' page on their shiny new website. Do feel free to make your views known to the good folk at the QSFA and Chairman John Grace. Just a thought: on a recent visit to KFC's, my future brother-in-law looked at the staff scurrying about. "They work so hard," he said. "They must get lots of money." If only...

Someone Stands Up to Celia

And it's Eddie Hobbs! The wee Corkman has become the first person to point out the slight issue with Celia Larkin simultaneously getting sweetheart deals from a major lender and serving on the board of the National Consumer Agency (NCA). True, the NCA spends most of its time on grocery price surveys and and shuffling its Chief Executive out in front of the media to lecture us on 'shopping around', but having one of its board members in hoc to a lender with a rep for reposessions is still a little grotesque.

Dissapointingly, Eddie has only called for her to work for free or quit, rather than stating the obvious: her position is simply untenable. It was blatant cronyism when she was appointed, and the fact that Fingleton

forced through a conveniently-timed loan for her (the loan paid off a tidy sum she'd received from the local FF organisation, a matter that was due to come up in Dublin Castle) is just another slap in the face. 

We'll give him the benefit of the doubt, however, and presume he fully expects her to resign before putting in a few hours of work for free. Hobbs himself has put his money where his mouth is, much to his credit. He may be annoying, but he's straight - most people will take that over a slick PR guru who receives quick loans from dubious sources any day.

Daft stuff

Daft's new report has put paid to self-serving spinning by the Sindo and Parlon that the housing market has bottomed out, or is starting to recover. Daft.ie's housing price index shows clearly that average asking prices are continuing to fall dramatically. They now stand, on average, at 80.9 per cent of the average published asking price in 2007.


Good to see a site that depends on property advertising for revenue continue to doggedly tell the truth. I know I'll read Daft's analysis of the market before I even bother with the in-hoc broadsheets.

Rumble Brewing at Village

It's heartwarming to see that Michael Smith, owner/publisher/editor of the new Village hasn't let his recent Four Courts tussle with Declan Ganley hold him back from starting another one.


A brief recap: two months ago, Ganley took offence to the coverage he got in Village's second issue - in his defence, most people would get uppity if they saw themselves called a 'snake oil salesman' on a magazine cover - so he took them to court, looking to get all copies of the issue pulped. In the event, Ganley seemed to have backed down (perhaps a lengthy show-trial on the issue didn't appeal) and agreed to do a 'wide-ranging interview' in the next issue. All was well in the Village.


Well, not quite. After much to-ing and fro-ing about who would interview Libertas' esteemed leader, they finally agreed on Bruce Arnold, a commentator sympathetic to the party. His article isn't worth the cover price of 3.95, being mainly a recycled version of this Indo rant. What follows, however, is worth buying for posterity.


Editor Smith runs down through the whole sorry saga - I particularly enjoy him noting that Arnold was Village's ninth choice interviewer - with quite a barb for the writer:


Michael Smith:
He informed me that he had conducted a telephone interview with Mr Ganley but there is no evidence in his filed copy that he did in fact conduct the interview [which is true - there isn't]. For this and other obvious reasons, Village will not be paying him the €500 free he sought. Mr Arnold also delayed publication of Village by a day by spuriously and counter-factually claiming he had not been sent a copy of the February-march article.


Don't be surprised if the slapdown leads a furious Arnold into the court, or if Ganley looks to resume his action. Credit to Smith: the barrister has already demonstrated more flair at stoking up controversy than the magazine's previous owner. Village's website, sadly, is appalling, but a new one is launching soon - presumably whenever Smith finds a minute to do it.

After Picturegate...

Came the ridicule. Some enterprising photoshoppers on Creative Ireland have gone to work here. One suspects that the combination of bitterness and spare time amid the recently-redundant had some part to play. My personal fave: