Political World
Anger over property tax compounded by our national pastime for whingeing
World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com
It could be 15 years ago that I was on a train from Galway to Dublin on a Sunday night – and somewhere between Clara and Nowhere, the locomotive broke leaving us all stranded for almost two hours as they waited for a replacement to arrive from Dublin.
Iarnród Éireann was going through one of its periodic ‘customer is king’ phases at the time. And as we finally neared Dublin some poor guy with a clipboard was dispatched to take note of the complaints.
And boy was he busy, as they gave graphic details of missed flights and the vital business appointments and the events they had missed, for which no money could compensate, but still they would take any compensation that was going.
I didn’t complain. Maybe I was jealous that I wasn’t important enough to be catching a business flight or that my presence wasn’t essential at some business conference. The most I was missing was probably Glenroe or the start of the Sunday Game or a dinner gone cold.
I must say I was suspicious at how many very important people were on the train with me.
My logical (or maybe cynical) side was saying: “Most of these people just want to whinge out loud.”
Despite the best efforts of ‘Ballyhea says No’ and Fintan O’Toole and all the left-wing parties, Irish people just haven’t done mass protests or riots or taken to the streets like the Greeks or the Spanish.
But what the Irish have attained world class status at is whinging. We take our medicine but boy do we moan about it. The preferred outlet isn’t a mass rally outside the Dáil on Kildare Street but via the telephone, or Joe Duffy or Sean O’Rourke or on Keith Finnegan or whatever.
And so it is with the property tax. There is genuine confusion and there are people who feel hard done by. But I can’t help feeling that there is a large element of whinging, people venting their general unhappiness, blowing something that is a a relatively small problem into the biggest crisis of confidence since the foundation of the State.
And so the first thing I’ll say about the property tax controversy as it related to early payments is that there has been a whinge factor. Perhaps a minority one, but it has been there nonetheless.
The way the property tax has happened has been very telling of the kind of society we have. It replaced the temporary household charge which was a bit of a fiasco.
Once the Revenue took over there was to be no messing. It shows the fear of God the Commissioners strike into people. Hopes by left-wing parties of mounting a popular boycott fell flat on its face.
Statistics show that of the 1.56 million homes registered for the tax, the compliance rate for this year (2013) has been over 90 per cent. From the start, they made it clear that those who did not pay would face the full panoply of sanctions available to Revenue for defaulters in other taxes.
Did the ploy work? Of course it did.
What the Revenue did do when they took over the administration of the tax was they asked for an extra six months to design the scheme. That meant there was a gap for the first six months this year when there was neither a household charge nor a property tax.
The upshot was that the new tax was kind of eased in – for only six months in 2013. It meant households only paid half the tax this year.
Politically, that was beneficial for the Government as well. They could introduce a very harsh new tax but gradually.
Looking through the statistics provided by Revenue for the first year of operation, a few things stand out like a sore thumb.
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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