Political World
Do we need a new Troika to keep tabs on Shatter?
World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com.
The most surprising turn-up for the books of 2014 is that a full quarter of the year has gone by and I haven’t written the words ‘troika’ or ‘bailout’ or ‘conditionality’ more than a dozen times.
At the beginning of April last year, we would all have been girding our loins for yet another quarterly visit from the Government’s ‘cigirí scoile’, with the delegation, the meetings and all the palaver that might surround it: the box-ticking exercises; the arguments over what State assets should and shouldn’t be sold; fights with Joan Burton over job activation; the internal European Commission staff reports that were always more critical of the Government than the public pronouncements.
That had always struck me as strange. In public the Troika praised the Government for meeting its targets. But in private they would criticise the fact that the Coalition always wanted to opt for the soft option.
I remember speaking to one of the senior officials from the outside agencies who explained that their presence in Ireland gave the Government political cover to take hard and unpopular decisions (to mete out tough medicine in other words) and succeed in achieving real reform. When the citizens complained, explained the official, the Coalition could easily have deflected blame by saying: ‘we didn’t want to do this but the Troika effectively twisted our arms and left us with no choice’.
But perhaps what the Troika official missed is that people see through that. Or at least, they will blame the devil they known rather than the devil they don’t.
And politicians know that too. So this Government, like all Governments do, found that its room for manoeuvre was restricted by the Troika. Still, there was some wiggle room. And so they invariably chose the path of least resistance where possible.
Having said that, it was still a programme and they still had to comply with the conditions to ensure the trio of international bodies – the EU Commission; the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund – released the €67 billion in loans they gave to us over four years.
Ironically, last weekend, Minister for State at the Department of Finance Brian Hayes generated an awful lot of controversy when seeming to hanker nostalgically for the troika years. Hayes said two things: the people “like the idea of surveillance” from outside agencies and that there was “grudging support in the country for the Troika”.
While his opponents in the EU parliament election contest in Dublin went bananas, I’d guess that there is more than marginal support for what he said.
What he meant with surveillance, I guess, is that people liked the very transparent memorandums of understanding with their quarterly targets for all to see. For a lot of people this was a very effective, a very tangible, and a very democratic, means of the Governments showing what it was setting out to do – and us, as citizens, being in a position to evaluate whether they achieved those targets or not.
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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