Cowen puts his nose above the parapet but we still have more questions than answers

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

It’s not often that the armchairs and lounge setting of TG4’s relaxed chat show Cómhrá, or the even more relaxed persona of its presenter Máirtin Tom Sheáinín Mac Donncha, feature on the front pages of the national press.

But TG4’s coup in getting the first interview with Brian Cowen since he stepped down as Taoiseach deservedly won headlines for Baile na hAbhann last week. The programme goes out tonight (Thursday) at 7.30pm and while the TG4 and Raidio na Gaeltacta presenter is no Jeremy Paxman, he still asks Cowen all the questions that a current affairs presenter would and should ask.

They involve questions about what happened on the night of the bank guarantee; his poor record as Taoiseach and as Minister for Finance, the pursuit of wrong policies, and the failure to anticipate a crash.

There will always be the conflicting views on how the Government reacted when the crash took place – the debate between austerity hawks and Keynesian disciples who advocated enough spending to stimulate the economy and grow it out of recession.

In a sense that debate was moot as others (the Troika) had dictated that we had to take our tough medicine or else we would get no money. Politically, it would have been a huge gamble to try and brazen it out and to look for even larger sums from our lenders, or our “international partners” as Cowen called them as if we were somehow equal, which we definitely weren’t (he was always a sucker for awful ‘officialese’).

Ireland got €67 billion as part of a €85 billion package – the other €17bn came from the pension reserve fund. It’s hard to imagine where we would have, or could have, got more from international lenders to pursue a stimulus policy. It’s the classic case of what happens when the Man from Del Monte says No.

We were in a strait-jacket and there’s no two ways about it. The State had little choice but to pursue what it was told to do: “The Troika is correcting our homework,” was Pat Rabbitte’s neat phrase.

The proof of the pudding was that the Coalition, to all intents and purposes, continued with the four-year bailout programme when it came into office albeit it did succeed in getting some variations – but few of them of a fundamental nature.

So in a sense Cowen’s government did respond appropriately – if you were an adherent to the austerity school – when faced with a crisis. But that does not excuse it for having caused the calamity in the first place.

Cowen gave as much information to Máirtin Tom Sheáinín as he has to any current affairs presenter. Maybe he gave a bit more – the Connemara man has a lovely relaxed style and his interviewees tend to be “ar a gcompóird” in studio with him.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.