Political World
Budget speculation kicks off new political season
Autumn: a season of mists and Michael Noonan. Because, between now and the middle of October, we’ll see almost as much of that slightly world weary expression and familiar pate than as Donegal defenders circling the defensive D in Croke Park.
World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com
This is the week where the Budget season kicked off in earnest. The party think-ins are out of the way. The Dáil is back. The bilaterals – involving Noonan and Brendan Howlin on the one side, and line Ministers on the other – have begun. The CSO figures showing the level of growth in the second quarter (a sure fire indicator of the wiggle room that will be available for the Budget) have been published.
The last piece of the jigsaw will come early next month when the Exchequer returns for September are published.
If they go with trend, it will allow Noonan and Howlin to draft their respective parts of the Budget. Howlin tells Departments how much they are allowed to spend next year – they have to make adjustments accordingly; Noonan decides changes in State revenue generation including taxes, duties and he also decides the extent of the deficit the Government will run in 2015.
The figures for this year have been good. Growth wasn’t particularly strong at the start of the year but seems to have accelerated.
It is certain too that confidence amongst citizens – which is hard to measure – is returning, and they are beginning to be emboldened to make those big financial decisions they recoiled from during the hard years.
That can be seen on the housing side. Is it a bubble? They say it’s not. But prices are exploding and demand clearly exceeds supply – in certain areas of Dublin in particular. They are still a good deal below the peak but the peak was too high and there is a question – will the subsidiary peak that will be reached this time be also too high for Ireland?
That’s a developing story but already it seems that no human hand will be big and powerful enough to stop it when it begins to develop momentum and gallop towards another Nemesis.
In any instance, that’s in the future. For now, let’s deal with what we know about the October budget. It’s clear that the Government will definitely not go for a €2 billion adjustment in the Budget. We know that the target set out in the Stability Programme is for the General Government Deficit to be reduced to 2.9% by the end of 2015.
With the economy performing better, the thinking in the Government at the moment is that it the percentage can be reached without having to take out all that money. Some figures in Government believe it can be reached with a neutral budget – where cuts and revenues will effectively cancel each other out.
The data from this week and early October – September is the second-best tax month of the year – will let us know the room for manoeuvre on October 14.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
Academically, politics is described as a science. But in the real world, it’s more of an art – and one of the big decisions a Government has to make is to decide when to call an election.
Will they see out the full term, or will they go early – either to mitigate the damage they will ship, or to secure a victory before things go awry, or the economy takes a dip, or some kind of controversy erupts?
Timing is everything.
And there’s a bit of art to that – not to mention a lot of luck. If you call it early and win big, you’re a genius. If you call it early and lose, you are the political version of the village fool.
Charlie Haughey was a poor judge of the public mood. Twice he called snap elections and on both occasions they backfired. Haughey succeeded Jack Lynch as Taoiseach in late 1979 and did not – technically – have his own mandate. He tried to remedy that by calling an election in 1981. But it recoiled. Ray MacSharry warned him not to hold it during the H Block hunger strikes when republican prisoners were dying each day. He did not listen to the advice and found himself out of office.
After his return to power in 1987, Haughey tired of presiding over a minority government that kept on losing votes in the Oireachtas (the opposition won nine private members motions).
So he called a snap general election and it backfired. Fianna Fáil lost seats and had to broker a coalition deal with the Progressive Democrats and his long-standing political adversary Dessie O’Malley.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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World of Politics with Harry McGee
I was cycling down Mount Street in Dublin on Tuesday. It’s a wide esplanade that links the Grand Canal with Merrion Square. The street is a mixture of fine Georgian buildings and modern office blocks.
About half-way down is the office of the International Protection Office, which deals with asylum seekers who have arrived in the country.
Needless to say, the office has been overwhelmed in the past year. Besides an estimated 80,000 refugees who have arrived from Ukraine, there have been about 20,000 people from other parts of the world who have arrived into Dublin (mostly) claiming asylum.
The numbers peaked around Christmas, but they have been falling a little. In January, more than 1,300 people arrived seeking asylum but the numbers fell back to 831 and 858, in February and March respectively.
They are still huge numbers in a historical context.
So back to my cycle on Tuesday. I knew that some asylum seekers were camping outside the International Protection Office, but I was taken aback by how many. There were six tents lined up on the pavement directly outside. Then on the ramp that led down to the basement carpark on the side of the building, there were about another 20 tents.
It looked like what it was, a refugee camp in the middle of Dublin’s business district. If you pan out from Mount Street, you will find tents here and there in nearby streets and alleys. There were a good few tents in an alleyway off Sandwith Street about 500 metres away.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
God that was a dramatic and historic weekend in England, wasn’t it? So much excitement, so much change, so much hype, so much out with the old and in with the new, and what looks like the coronation of a new leader. Yes, the local elections in Britain were something else weren’t they!
Apologies for not going on about King Charles III but the contract I signed when I became a lifelong republican forbids me to discuss the topic!
I know the British local elections sound a bit boring by comparison, but the results were stunning.
The Conservatives lost nearly 1,000 seats, the British Labour Party gained almost 500 and both the Lib Dems (with 350 gains) and the Greens (gaining over 200) also had amazing days at the polls.
It was Labour’s best day since 2002 but its victory was only partial. The Greens and the Lib Dems actually made gains at the expense of Labour in more affluent areas, and in parts of Britain where there were high numbers of graduates.
It was in the Red Wall constituencies in the North of England where the Labour recovery was strongest. These are working class constituencies with pockets of deprivation where people voted for the Labour Party forever. But all of those constituencies voted for Brexit and then voted for the Tories in the next general election. Labour is now winning back some of those votes.
Local elections are classified as second-tier elections which essentially means – from a national perspective – they are not life-or-death affairs, and not everything turns on them. Of course, it’s really important to have good local representation. But they are not an amazing weather vane for who rules the country.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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