Archive News
CoalitionÕs contrasting fortunes on swings and roundabouts over promissory notes and polls
Date Published: 13-Feb-2013
what a week it was for the Coalition – a bit like winning the lottery (the promissory note) and breaking your leg when running into the shop to claim your prize (the Irish Times opinion poll). The temporary pain of one will be out-trumped by the sheer scale of the other, but that remains to be seen.
The deal the Coalition secured on the promissory note last week was – unquestionably – the biggest success it has had since entering Government in March 2011.
Let’s get all the conditional stuff out of the way first. Sure, the overall amount of debt stays the same. Fine Gael and Labour threw in the towel on that empty election promise very soon after taking over the reins, when they realised they just couldn’t deliver on that without a dramatic alteration of political direction.
Both are conventional and mainstream parties, an outlook that is shared by most of the electorate. Neither was going to take the chance of leaving Ireland isolated from the rest of Europe on that issue.
To the credit of both parties, they used the tiny bit of wiggle room they had to its fullest extent. In one day, in 23 hours in fact, they managed to get rid of what was left of the hated Anglo Irish Bank, get rid of the almost equally hated promissory notes, and persuade the normally intractable European Central Bank to change an overdraft into a long-term mortgage.
It is quite true that the capital of €28 billion will have to be repaid. But the short-term notes with a horrible annual payment of €3.1bn each March for 10 years have gone.
Instead, there are long term bonds with a couple of nice twists to the benefit of Ireland. Firstly, no capital will have to be paid back until 2038. That means Ireland will pay only interest, which takes down the short-term bill.
Secondly, the promissory notes had a very low interest rate – it was the short time-span of the loan that was the killer. Normally, bonds carry higher interest rates. Indeed it is 3.5% for these bonds, which is much higher.
But what has happened is that the ECB will lend the money to the Irish Central Bank at 1%, which in turn will charge 3.5% interest on the bonds it issues. That means a 2.5% profit margin for the Central Bank, which will go straight back into the Exchequer. The net outcome is that the effective interest rate for Ireland is really only 1%.
It’s not all smelling of roses. Hundreds of ordinary employees of Irish Bank Resolution Corporation have lost their jobs. It will cost an estimated €1 billion to wind up IBRC and there will be other associated costs. In addition, transferring all the €14 billion of assets to other institutions (which will turn out to be mainly NAMA) will be complicated, costly and could encounter big cruxes.
Still, a win is a win and it would have been churlish to present it in any other way. It will have come as a shot in the arm to both Government parties, particularly Labour, which has had an abysmal showing in opinion polls in recent months.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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